I see that this thread has attracted everyone who bears a gripe against official servers and Funcom in general. @Alexandria, you should be careful not to assume that everything you read here is being said in good faith.
Official servers definitely have worse performance than private, and I really could never recommend official PvP, but I have been playing on the same official PvE server for over six years and have zero incentive to move to private.
Private servers have their own host of issues that do not exist on official, like biased admins, mod implementation that you may not agree with, financial needs, or even owners who stop caring and decide to shut down. You might be lucky and find a good private server that suffers none of these, but official provides the exact same thing every time - for better or worse.
One of a few of my own topics that I stopped following due to the toxicity in the replies.
There seemed to be disagreement whether it was possible or not, but this is the suggestion being referenced here.