Im confused there are multi of the same zone why so many servers?

I don't recommend it, user interface and search results are weak, you have to go back to the old ~ alt.games.everquest or comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.rpg which can be found in google groups. There were several other places to look, I think those were two the earliest and most used. It is painful to try and find any info using google groups, more like snapshots of what people were talking about rather then the results you are looking for.

Reason for this is back then, we avoided game company web sites like the plague. Too much censorship so you would have your posts deleted if you said anything including the truth. As the game industry evolved, they became a little more tolerant so the clunky interface of the groups was replaced with the forums we enjoy now.

I still remember the initial launch problems. Guessing the first batch of CDs was probably around 50k just because that was a fairly standard batch size back then. That first batch was sold out within a month and EQ was claiming 500k accounts within 6 months. The problems weren't all to do with servers, I think I was running on a 120 MHz Intel processor but it could have been a 500 MHz K6 AMD under W95<still in 1999> and a Vodoo 3000 video card. Game was really a mess back then. On my system at night, you would just have the character on a black screen no matter what you had for a light source. I seem to remember taking at least 6 minutes to zone and frequent disconnects from dialup. Frame rate on my computer was so slow, it would take 10-20 seconds just to turn around to see what was attacking you from behind.

Aaah dialup. I used AOL dialup as a raiding bard until mid-2009. Surprisingly playable, tbh, apart from the disconnects ... I was not popular with RL !