Everquest is smaller than XI but becasue it's a western company there is a bigger pool of people to recruit from that love the game, and want to work on it. Even if it means less pay than working on wow or something.

XI will only hire JP developers, which is a much smaller pool. That's not to say JP doesn't have lots of developers, it's to say they don't have many that will want to work on it as they would if they could recruit from NA and EU.