Wow 16 Years and a Campaign Ending Finale .. you sir ROCK!
My longest (successful) Campaign was 3-4 Years long and I have to admit that I don't think that I could GM a Campaign longer than that because of serious GM Burnout (I always wanna try new things).
I can't imagine being in one campaign for that long. My longest so far is only a couple years and I've gone through three or four characters simply because bad things happen or I die.
How did your people manage 22 levels in 16 years? Really slow leveling or constant dying?
Well, some of that was pre-3e, where levelling was... much... slower... (and I think PC may have reduced xp awards to keep the levelling closer to his original scale than the standard 3e scale)