As Swish mentioned,
https://www.takproject.net/ is currently up to Luclin, but will go to PoP which IMO is the best "non"-classic expansion. I play there more than P99, simply b/c of my time constraints. You can multi-box on TAKP (up to 3 accounts), which makes EQ more approachable for those of us that may only have a few hours to play a week and need frequent AFKs (damn kids). TAKP's community is pretty awesome, but finding groups while leveling can be tedious. Grouping for AA grinds on the other hand is pretty common.
That being said, I prefer P99 when I have time to group b/c to me the best part about EQ was(is) grouping. As Swish also noted, P99 only goes up to the last patch of Velious (yet to be implemented). While there is tons of inflation on the server and nothing will ever deliver a true classic replication, P99 delivers the best experience IMO. The forums is not an accurate representative of the good community here, but it's not bad either.
Best of luck. Be sure not to throw away anything you care about IRL for an elf sim. If you do end up playing, I recommend trying both servers. I can't speak to other EMU's, I only tried one other (can't remember which) but it wasn't my cup of tea.