Does the european server have a better internet reception for european, or all the server are located in the same place ?
pretty steady 173ms on Phinny from Europe here, AB is much lower, but it is also an "old" live server, which is nice but can't be compared to the more lively TLP's out there
AB is extremely active in Euro times, and has many very active guilds, from family, friends to top endgame raid.
AB also got all the former UbiSoft EU servers (Kael Drakkal (nope - not a typo), Sebilis, Venril Sathir) merged into it. So whatever remains from that period of eq-history is on AB unless they transferred off.