If I said "patchme" to you, would you know what I meant and have done it?
Just a thought but it could be a result of EQ wanting to patch itself with the live servers...to do that you need to make an adjustment.
Make a shortcut to the desktop (or wherever) of eqgame.exe from your P99 folder, then right click and select properties.
Then (as the pic suggests) add patchme after the directory path.
That'll stop it wanting to patch to the live servers, and you should see the server select screen!
(sorry for the bad picture, where I'm typing from doesn't want to let me upload any images today...so it's a small attachment)
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If that doesn't work, it might have patched to live and you might need to uninstall/reinstall before doing the above...good luck!