I played on a WoW private server, and I do not miss it one bit. Don't get me wrong, the quality of the private server was fine, but you just can't really get those good old days of WoW back without some kind of compromise. I could tolerate not having truly Blizzlike quest scripting, but I was not happy with the amount of lag this server suffered during peak hours, nor how the end-game content was dominated by only a few specific guilds, one of which pretty much threw me out like trash when they merged with another guild.

But in FFXIV, although it admittedly took me some time to get in to due to the less-than-stellar early game, I ended up enjoying myself as much as I did back during the actual classic days of WotLK, paired with a great story and a wonderful guild that I could call home. All without having to compromise a thing. Sure I have to pay a monthly subscription now, but being able to play for free was never my goal anyway. I just wanted to play a good MMO, and I found one.