It's kind of funny... I'm a long time sub to MrHappy1227 and a moderator for Slyakagreyfox (the hosts of State of the Realm) and both of them have done things to attempt bring smaller servers to life. Both made a push to bring the two smallest servers more popularity. Haps did it for Zalera, Sly did it for Mateus... both kind of sputtered out.

The weird part of it was that when we did it, people on BOTH servers saw the crowds of new players gathering at the City-state Aetherytes and swarming the starting zones to power level together.... we were treated like a plague of locusts. Granted, there were about 50 to 100 of us at the time, so it could be a bit overwhelming, but people kept shouting things like: "What the heck is going on here!? You're overcrowding the place!" and "You're ruining my quiet server!"

Now, I suppose a small, gradual influx of people would have been less disruptive, but the overall sense we were given is that people liked that it was a small, quiet server with fewer people around. I do wish you luck I getting more quality people onto those servers, but I don't think they'll ever be heavily populated.