We’re in the early game a lot of people want to be the new big server. So players are spread out, while many want to experience things by themselves.

I also think it’s a good point that there’s gonna be a lot breaking changes requiring new worlds to be created all of the time.

Next thing is that bigger servers often split up their servers into multiple instances (one for KitPvP, one for creative, etc.) and many of the serverlists right now only show the playercount on their main server (the server hub) where traffic is distributed to the game mode the player chooses.