Let me share my experience with Elcardia server and staff.
It all started when they announced the feature list on maxcheaters forum.. I immediately fall in love with them and start asking questions and suggesting things. It was not long till I noticed that the administrator and his crew are really skilled developers who take their work seriously. The day of beta preview came fast, and I was one among of many testers that tried it. Notice, that my gaming experience is not based on L2J servers.. I come from a time when authorities was chasing down and closing Lineage 2 servers duo to the illegal files they ware using. I pointed this out because I want you to know I'm not easily satisfied when comes to balance in this game, specially in L2J projects. Anyway, lets get back on track..
So, as I was saying, I was one of the beta testers. First thing that surprised me was that their data pack was pretty good even tho it was still on beta preview without any pre-modifications. But of course there ware alot of things needed to be fixed. While others was busy testing classes like archer, dagger and mage.. I started my tests with tank classes. You should have seen the beta testers reaction when a DreadKnight came and owned them. The point of my saying is, that classes witch are barely seen on nowadays private servers, are really playable on Elcardia. All the way from Paladin too TempleKnight, from ShillienKnight too DarkAvenger..
Thru the period of one week, myself and other people around the world ware testing skills from all classes. While we was busy reporting issues, they GM crew was busy fixing them.. And I must say, the end result is just incredible. All the classes except supporters are playable like on a server using official files! Once again, this crew really knows how to develop this game. They made a server witch is unique, well balanced and special in many points of view.
As an old school interlude lovers, me and my guild have sure find a place where we'll be leaving our free time on. We know actions speak louder than words, therefor I won't say anything else except this : Meet you ingame 8)