DiamondFire is for sure gettin' there. Think of it this way, back when there was just node one, there were some nights where no one was on, or just a few people chilling one night, and it went from that to a hefty number of players with 7 nodes & multi sponsorships, so it's making lots of progress! Just takes time. These last few years have been a big boost thanks to Dubinzi with the outreach/sponsorships. I'll use Hypixel as an example for why we aren't at that size: Hypixel for example launched differently and had a big advantage compared to most other servers, there was already popularity surrounding Hypixel and Rezzus's maps that they released, that duo made some mad content so there was already a huge community. That and Minecraft was getting really popular so when they launched their network in 2013, they also had a good infrastructure from the software engineers I'm assuming and good playable content, so that and the already existing crowd and the advertising did quite a number on the popularity, then starting the YouTube/Twitch program to give ranks to users via an application by uploading videos or streaming. It was in the right place at the right time, and it never really stopped
So most servers have to start from the ground up, and DiamondFire was one of those servers, and now it's really growing :) A lot of popular servers were just in the right place at the right time and the same thing will happen to us. The baseline average of players skyrocketed. Some of it may have to do with the niche. To answer the question, it's probably because of those things, and it just takes time to gain traction. It was a bit expensive to self-promote the server onto places, and there weren't any big YouTubers to help spread the magic word at the time, maybe it was just difficult to outreach content creators at the time, Jere and Dub will have an answer for that. But now the infrastructure is growing, more nodes are being released, and more sponsorship deals are being made - it's definitely going to get there, probably in a few years if they keep doing what they are doing. It's already a bit popular, but it's going to pop off more at some point considering it's so unique :P
