EQ emu started on December 6, 2001 according to this post by a former senior EQ emu dev in 2013 celebrating its 12 year anniversary. It appears a whole gang of devs have worked on it in the intervening years. P99 being the most successful project of the whole lot. Blue launched in Oct 2009.
source:
http://www.eqemulator.org/forums/showthread.php?t=37586