Old EQ player with questions

[armlocks101]

Hey everybody, I've been digging around on the forums and site for the last several days trying to get a feel for what's going on here. A friend told me about this and I'm pretty interested.

Since I'm introducing myself, I played EQ for several years (Classic to Omens) until RL caught up to me. I played some MMO's after that but nothing more than a year maybe two. Absolutely nothing has compared to EQ so I'd like to play on an emulator server and check it out.

I do have some questions though. I read somewhere that this server averages about 500 players on at once. Is that right?

I've read so much stuff over the last few days some of it is blurring together. Does this server have an exp bonus?

Something I read described this server as a "Progression" server. Is that accurate? How far has it progressed? What triggers the proggession? A mob kill? Time?

What about custom files? Any at all?

How about downtime? Is it often? Scheduled?

I did do some searching but really couldn't find anything about that stuff above so I apologize if it's been asked a bunch but I'm kind of tired of searching around for those answers and I'm at work so time is limited at the moment.