Oh, I'm well aware of Itzlegend, when myself and 4 friends went to Conquest, he decided we were uber, and always wanted us in his group (well, mostly my 4 friends, but I got pulled in as well). He possesses just enough of that egomaniac control quality to make him a good leader.
On Andred, most of them took at least a weeks vacation, some two, the day the server opened, and PL'd all the way up to 50. It was actually kinda cool, the whole thing was like an epic raid, but scalled down (ie, in the 20's, they raided Spindelhalla with 50 people). However, now that I'm actually working, and not in school, the thought of using some of my precious 3 weeks vacation on something other than travel scares me
You hit the nail on the head though. They were very much about playtimes and contributing 100%. No way I could even come close to that level of play anymore, despite playing quite a bit. Even though I'm on most nights, it just feels crappy when you HAVE to be on each night.
The one thing I really liked about Conquest was the way Itz divided up loot. Maybe its not specific to them, and it was a lot of work on his part, but it seemed to work well. Everytime you went on a raid, you got Raid Participation Points. When an item dropped, it was bid on, and whoever was willing to spend the most Raid Participation Points on it, got it. That way, if someone started not showing up for raids etc, they couldn't just show up for the one where the item they wanted dropped and hope to get it on /random. Conversely, if there was an item you really wanted, you could just save up a pile of RPP and have a good shot at getting it. As I said though, he had to track all that crap, and I'm surprised anyone has done it for so long.