Well I made experience on russian and european mid rate server (based on gracia epilogue mostly) and i could say that both sides had the positive and negative aspects. At Europe most server closed due to inactivity of the Admins or Corruption and in Russian most server closed cuz ppl reached the best equipment way too fast so they got bored and left ( these are my experience I have made so far).
The positive aspects at europe are first of all the language aspect english should be understandable for all thats why all servers EU and Russian onces should be based on english files imo. And secondly due to the fact that there are ppl from many diffrent countries playing on europe servers I have met many ppl which i still keep talking to even if i didnt play with them for years and you learn somethign new about their culture (even if its not that much) and i keep refreshing my english while playing Lineage on european servers. The negative aspects of european servers are that mostly some classes are just overpowerd but the admins dont rly care about it and just ignore it. Also corruption is a big part of european servers cuz mostly the admins, like some ppl said here already, just care about donations.
The posivite aspects of russian servers are the bigger online a-beep-ts and i also like the alt+b features which is based on mostly all their servers. Buggs and class issues (overpowerd classes etc) get fixed faster or doesnt even exist compared to european servers. I have also met friendly ppl at russian servers but not that many cuz most of them didnt want or wasnt able to communicate with me which makes it way more difficult to get a clan or a cp which leads me to the negative aspects of russian servers. Same as on european servers you also have corruption but not as much as on european servers as i have noticed. But the biggest issue of russian servers is the intolerance of most ppl that even if the admins want to create an international server (european and russian mixed) the russian ppl keep talking in their language at trade and global chat and their shops instead of trying to communicate with the european ppl aswell. So they try to play for their own.
Thats the experience I have made so far on european and russian servers
Edit: I will start on a russian mid rate with english system and website aswell may it will be diffrent than my last experience but i dont give to much hope in it. ;)