The biggest issue with players recreating a 1.x server is that so much of the game was handled on the server's end...

People were able to reverse-engineer a functional server and game out of old installations and physical copies of the game, but there's no quests, no NPCs or enemies or anything... Aside from getting that data leaked from SE, if they even have it anymore, for them to move forward with it would involve remaking every piece of content.