people would show up for a month, level, farm, and then have nothing left to do.
Let's not forget, community complains rates are too low, so rates tend to be on the higher side for a "low-rate" server. Then you have the admin wanting to make a little extra cash so there's 300% Battle Manuals and other goodies. Everyone gets to max level and becomes bored even faster.
Now everyone has rushed to max level, complains there's nothing to do, but then get upset when servers try to do custom content because the custom content isn't official. Better just stick with the same stagnant content from a decade ago.
What about the massive number of quests and content that is there already in official pre-renewal? "Ugh, let players bypass those quests because we've all done it a thousand times before!!1!"
I think the community is most of the reason why there will likely never be a long lasting popular pre-renewal server in the US/EU. Just my pessimistic view. You'd likely have to find an English guild within a non-English server.