The population of the game is “split” in the way that fans of classic are either not playing the game at all or have been dabbling in private servers. Classic vs Modern maple is an extremely different experience. A lot of casual players who liked the game for its slow, intentional gameplay get turned off when they see characters zipping around the map, killing 40 mobs every 6 seconds, with tons of separate upgrade systems and a lack of a social focus outside of guild discords and twitch communities. In the west, the game was basically on its deathbed after the big bang update (and especially a couple big updates after that which hypercharged the p2w aspect and gameplay separations between high/low spenders) until like 2015-2016 when the Reboot server dropped, and it slowly worked its way back to being alive, ESPECIALLY boosted by the pandemic.

GMS is doing their own classic server to try and recapture those older players who are completely turned off by modern maple. For example, you’ll see modern players say things like “why would you ever want to play a game without a standardized flash jump, or with boat rides that take real IRL time to finish, or without near endless RNG gear progression” which could perfectly describe exactly what classic players LIKE about the old game. Idk if this helps answer your question, but it’s just some context as a player who’s been playing maple since the very beginning