The following is my opinion/personal experience and makes no references/attacks on anyone else on this thread.
Most "community" projects fail for a very simple reason: what's required is complex. Less than 1% of the people on this forum (or any other forum) have the required skills to make meaningful contributions. the other 99% are leeches, armchair practitioners, or people who expect(require is a better word) leaked VM with and YouTube video and their hand held.
Really, let's remove the emotions from the picture. It's a simple math.
To run a real BDO server, or write an emulation that is worth its salt.. you need to be or have a team with:
1). reverse code engineer
2). one or more people who can hack if real are used.
3). someone who can program in a language like C++, and has some basic reverse code engineer skill set.
4). experienced players to give feedback, or persons 1 or 2 (the coder/rce) be end game retail BDO players (never happens).
5). not have a team of people looking to ego++/chest puff, or take the files and run (even if they run, they can't fix the problems, having leaked files and no skill set).
6). be able to trust the people you are working with.
Not many people do pserver development. Not many people do reverse code engineering or code.
Add these together, you are left with a very very small group of individuals qualitied. Now when you factor in all of these rare birds truly being able to trust the other and act in the collective best interest? you end up with an impossible situation that melts into petty interpersonal drama... every time, always, no matter the game.
The truth is never pretty.