Played on DC, GC, and then Blue Burst. I remember struggling to find hit materials and be anything but worthless when I finally reached ultimate even offline on DC. I guess the novelty kept me coming back. I remember how exciting it was to finally play online. I'd say GC felt like the golden age for a bit until dupes ran rampant and you had to choose whether you wanted to be "legit" or try to compete with the crazy items people had that would join your room. Still, there was some crazy compulsion and excitement to play in those days and -- not that it was healthy -- it was fun to see the first players on the server absolutely nolifing their way to level 200. I still remember this noobmar, The_Greatest, that I kinda kept up with for a short while before he blew past me in experience. I was happily throwing almost all my free time at the game back then as I met most of my best PSO friends there. I was that kid with the Japanese ASCII keyboard controller. Madness.
I remember loving Episode II when I first played it and then hating how derivative Episode IV was. Things didn't seem more difficult, just more cheesy and cheap. I've always preferred being in the fray as a hunter, but range became a more important part of the game and thus rangers solidified their position as the most viable class (if it wasn't already). This server has a few broken items IMO, but it's an age-old problem of imbalance that would probably happen one way or another. I do like the increased maximum character stats here and obviously the exp buff as grinding this all over again would be ridiculous. Add in a nice community, event planning, custom quests, and a "happy hour" to reduce the woes of RNG and the positive changes far outweigh the negative changes.
It's hard to have the ideal in terms of everything like community/economy/content/balance/gameplay, but Ultima has done a fantastic job overall.