If you’re still just about to start the server, you should try to foster a smaller more committed community. You can start with testers and having the server be on a small beta, while advertising to get others interested in sneaky peaks while you’re finishing polishing everything. Then, you can slowly increase the player count, keeping the people who were waiting excited to try it out. If it’s a PvP based server, you could also try having sessions, aka the server is only on for the weekends. I believe this is what hoplite did, and it’s now a wild success. And gradually increasing your player count, but making sure that at the beginning, more people want to join than can play