ok gona clear a few wrong answers here.. ^^
EQ is developed by Verant interactive (may they burn in hell) and there owned and run by Sony Online.
Every game \"Server\" for each world in EQ is infact made up of a heap of servers.. each one running an indirvidual Zone, there all linked together as a network.
So for the \"Tribunal\" server, you have around 150 zones, each one run on an seperate machine, and the Tribunal \"server\" is just one of about 40 world server network groups. I base this ont eh fact that they can bring down indirvidual Zones while teh game is stil running for repair and maintence, which you couldnt do if the entire world was only run on a single machine.
To do what EQ does even for one world server... it costs a shit load of money, far more than any normal person can setup.
Oh and no we aint a company... since i last looked. The Producers( not the people that make teh game but teh people that forward the development money) get around 90% of the profit from game sales, the devs tend to get the other 10%... hence the reason Warez is bad, i think of it from teh devs point of view ^^, screw teh producers. Thats one reason games cost as they do.
Hmm been a while since I was here... still waiting for my new PC... there delaying it

damn them. should arrive on wednsday or thursday if there Letter of apologie was right.