I don't want to indulge crazy speculation about mysterious and nonsensical spawnings of IP exemptions. It reminds me of some old EQ myths and the fervor with which they were sometimes regarded
[You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.] I also don't want to be responsible for contributing to the headache of any of the volunteer staff working on this very cool project. So, I will offer only this limited information:
1) In 2014 an exemption for my wife and I took less than twelve hours to action.
<We played briefly then uninstalled and took a long break>
2) We just received an IP exemption which we requested a little less than three months ago. I never bumped the request, as per instructions and common knowledge on these forums.
P1999 staff are definitely still managing exemptions.
My opinion
I had assumed (wrongly I think now) that we had been given an earlier exemption already and so were not a priority, which I thought was fair. I believe the staff member handling my exemption this time was relatively much more senior than the staff member who handled our first exemption. This is just an assumption from reading these forums. General perusal of p1999's recent events leads me to believe they are currently understaffed and some things will take more time.
For me, this is a great project. What I like most is that it attempts to capture what I personally think is by far the most charming content of not only Everquest, but of MMOG's altogether and maintain it for future interest. I think the project takes a very long term view. I try to keep this in mind during our stay here.