It may not come across in text accurately, but that's not how I frame the argument. I don't believe that populations of a server is always proof that one rule set is superior to the other. There is so much more to the context than just populations. I honestly don't believe comparing Aradune to any server is very fair. Aradune was obviously the most populated TLP ever in terms of real players and to not think that is just straight trolling. Does that mean that Aradunes limited box rule set is superior to others though? No. Aradune was so popular because it was launched during the height of the covid lockdowns. Simple as that. That's why I don't think it's fair to compare it to other TLP's. That's why Aradune had more guilds trying to do batphone guilds than any other TLP, because so many people were working from home due to covid. The only thing Aradune proved is that when given the choice between limited boxing vs unlimited boxing (rizlona) is that more people prefer limited boxing. At least in the early expansions. I think most if not all Aradune guilds will transfer to Rizlona in later era's to get rid of the limited boxing, something all prior TLP's wanted in later era's but never had the possibility.
Mangler was extremely popular in Classic/Kunark but for many reasons died off a lot between middle of kunark to velious. By velious eras and beyond, phinny was prob more popular. Does that mean phinny was a better server than Mangler though? No it doesn't. That would be leaving so much out of context. There were a lot of things that caused Manglers population to drop so dramatically. The good thing about daybreak though is they have given us so many different options for TLP servers. You get to play where you enjoy the ruleset the most. Just because one server is more popular than the other doesn't make it better. You could even make the argument that comparing Mangler/phinny to Mischief/Thornblade is a bad comparison. One side are standard ruleset servers with minor deviations, the other is special ruleset. The better comparison is servers like Miragul/Selos/Rizlona/Agnarr to Mischief/Thornblade, which in that case mischief/thornblade were definitely more successful.
The bad part though is when you have people like Elderan who constantly make up fake numbers. That doesn't help anyone. He has consistently been called out for this across multiple servers, and generally always has the same my numbers must have been messed up that day excuse. Why do people who push this narrative love to use general channels? Because its the one system you could most easily manipulate. You can't manipulate number of guilds with number of average raiders in each, but you can certainly manipulate general channels. General channels don't take in to account so many things like auto kick for example, number of people in multiple channels, number of boxes in those, server rulesets etc. It's about the lowest IQ way of gauging something you could possibly think of. For example just as a test, during week two Elderan was claiming an average player base of high 2000's on Mischief in general channels. I'm just enough levels of degenerate to put this to the test. I logged in to mischief every single day for 7 days, the entire week 2 of launch. I logged in at 4am, 12pm and 8pm and joined every single general channel from base up to 20. I also did a /list in every channel to get all names and compiled all the weeks data. Not once even on a weekend at 8pm did the total reach anywhere what Elderan was posting. More over, it was easy to run a simple macro to see how many "unique" people were in the general channels cutting out the numbers of people in multiple channels at once. Another thing I ran was how many of these people were in the channels permanently all 7 days. It's easy to assume that these characters are afk bots. Doing these tests that anyone can do, DRAMATICALLY decreases the average number. Did I do this test to prove anything about the Mischief server? No. I did it cause Elderan is a cancer of the TLP's running 72 man box armies and wants to push the servers he plays on to be the most popular because it effects his bottom line income.
The main reason I like to follow the trends of populations on TLP's has nothing to do with any dick measuring contest between servers, it's because following the trends shows you if the EQ TLP's are growing in popularity or declining. Why do I think this is important? Not because I care if EQ lives or dies, but more so because I believe that EQ was in the forefront of showing a proof of concept that launching new classic servers every year can help an old game build its audience. Why is this important? Because I want to see it done in more games. I personally am still hoping for an official classic DAoC server. I'm sure many people have games they wish would do the same thing EQ did. I believe based on the growing number of players EQ has brought in to the TLP's that EQ has definitively proven that this is sustainable and a great way to rebuild an old game, and I want to see it done to more games.