From the Artist-Formerly-Known-As-Lum-The-Mad:
News of an Alternative!
Tired of waiting in line and server outages? Then run your own! Obviously, this is seven shades of 'Against The EULA', but the idea is fascinating, none the less. My primary attraction with the genre is the size of the game worlds, and the virtual tourism of it all, so in many ways, a MMORPG in which I'm the only player is not such a bad thing.
It's probably not as simple as it sounds though. Assuming this isn't just a bunch of 'Learn PHP in 21 Days' Optimists, reverse engineering the client will get you so far, but will still leave you missing an awful lot; serverside scripting and the like. I played with a UO Shard Emulator a long time ago, and indeed, had a server of sorts. The Client worked when I connected to it, and I could run around and so on, but none of the monsters or vendors worked, and it just wasn't the same as the real shards.
Then of course, it's the politics of the Clique Server. At least with a commercially run MMORPG there is, ostentiably, an impartial fairness when it comes to petitions and GM powers. One of the things that let Neverwinter Nights, and Diablo Battlenet online forays down was people, rather than the games themselves. Joining a random server only to be repeatedly harrassed by the server host and his pals for kicks and giggles. Obviously all you can do there is leave.
Technically too, DIY Servers are impractical. An average home user with Broadband can just about get away with a 32 player game of something like NWN, if that. Unless a abnormally large, and expensive connection is availble, no DIY Server can ever really be 'Massively Multiplayer'. MMORPG servers may be hosted by 'The Man' for $, but they do usually do more than just boot it up and leave it going. Customer Service in online games is usually a joke, but it does exist.
All these bits and pieces add up, and mean that MMORPG Server emulators are rarely more than an interesting curiosity, but it is fascinating that they can exist at all.