That 6-month to 2-year respawn timer is a really interesting mechanic, especially for such an old title. The first game I ever played that had loot farming and respawn timers was Everquest 2 back in 2004, that was the year I first had a PC with a decent graphics card. Before that the only RPGs I had played were the final fantasy series and the Baulders Gate Dark alliance titles on PlayStation 2.

You might enjoy checking out the Vanguard emulation server, so far I am enjoying roaming around the world of Telon more than I have enjoyed any online game. I never played it when it was live so the whole world is totally new to me. Back in 2007 my PC wouldn't have been able to handle the massive open world,I would have been lucky to get 5-10fps. The server is in an open alpha state with about 80% of the content implemented. All of the starting towns apart from the Dark Elf and Gnome have their quest lines fully scripted. The starting Isle of Dawn gives a very well-polished new player experience and rewards you with a pegasus flying mount at the end of the quest line.

Because it's still in open alpha you can use .rift command to teleport to any chunk of the game that has a rift stone,its useful for exploring the incredibly well-designed world. There are 15 players max on at peak times so if you actually meet and group with someone it feels special. Yesterday I was questing in the Silverlake area when a level 50 disciple wandered by and gave me a 1 handed mace which was a huge upgrade to what I was using.He told me some stories about areas he had been exploring which inspired me to visit those locations asap. I was surprised to find out the disciple could throw high-level buffs on my character without needing to be grouped with him, these buffs more than doubled my hitpoints and dramatically increased my damage output for 45 minutes. I was more than a little hyped about this situation and chance meeting.

We decided to check out a nearby dungeon known as the ruins of Cairnworth Hall, a haunted ruin that seems inspired by EverQuests Befallen dungeon. With the level 50 buffs I was able to solo the starting mobs which are lv 25 heroics,I was only a level 19 Cleric,each kill gave 7500 exp ,around 6% of a level I also got some loot ,fun times :). The dungeon looks good I will likely make a post on it soon.I haven't edited the footage I have yet but here is the start of the adventure, I ran out of disk space for recording which is why it kind of cuts out hastily.I managed to free up some space and capture more footage of the run which I will edit together at some point this week.

If you do feel like making a character on the server you can find the start-up guide here, its fairly straightforward,I didn't have any problems apart from the first 3 download links didn't work, the 4th link which is hosted by Mediafire worked perfectly and I was in the game fairly quickly after the download.
https://vgoemulator.net/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=4481