No new gen is going to have the brains, money, or devotion to create a server. The best they can do is essential, or they just go to hypixel, its an old game and the general youtube hype (what made it popular in the first place) is gone, people have moved on, kids grew up and got jobs, it is not just a low player base, the effective culture of the entire game completely died with the displacement of the original players, this is why minecraft being the top game of all time does not make it alive. When something's culture, soul, and effort is gone it is dead, only left to be a corporate husk and a shadow of its former self. Of course there are some youtubers left milking this game dry until it can no longer pull views (does not make it alive, more parasitic than anything). There is nothing unusual about this though, its called life, and eventually there is death, migration, cultural changes, generational changes, etc.
Do not count on your server going anywhere and do not rent one and waste your money, if anything, try to grow one up from the ground up as a root project (word of mouth, advertise via word of mouth). Again do not rent one and waste your money.
- signed long time server hoster who self developed several projects and spent alot of money on adverts with 40k~ views and no player growth (see profile for proof)
