In my situation, when mir was in its prime, I had days a week that I could burn on gaming.
Now, if a server was out like that, I wouldn't get past level 11 due to other commitments.
Its about the following, the games kept the same following, but that following (for some anyway) don't have anywhere near the time to invest in a game, and they dont want to be logging on a game for months to get to a point where they can potentially kill an OmaWarrior.
I suppose in one sense Private Servers have spoiled players into expecting a lot more reward for the time invested.
However, at the same time if a PS had the same Uc as official, it'd be a whole different ball game anyway.