Na I am not starting a big server, I have a small server of my own with around 10 daily players which I am proud of!

I have always started small and have had successful servers well in my opinion I was pretty satisfied with 150 to 320 players. Then I had a bunch of friends starting huge servers like hypixel, but they could not get players to stay or even come on.

If you want to start a big server you should consider a big youtube partner with more then 3000 subscribers at least, so he gets his followers up and pumped about joining the server with like a certain suspense. You probably will need to pay but it's worth it.

I agree with you Golden_Paw. That is an approach I take myself. Start small and grow as your community does. Saves on money and I think a lot of servers start big and then end up empty and failing. They end up asking for donations desperately towards the end and then the server closes. It is sad. But I suppose for those who manage to pull it off, the growth is extraordinarily fast. So they have that incentive.

It's good to a have maybe 3 different types of gamemodes if you are based on that. It gives player a wider range. But I don't think you should jump into minigames that require heaps of players.

I wouldn't know but I'm guessing people like to jump in head first. They think they have an awesome server and they'll prove it. And maybe they're willing to spend that much money to try and hook a enough people to fill the space.

Either way, starting from scratch takes a while.