I'm going to keep saying it til it gets through.
The people, you guys, have complete control over how popular the servers are! Jump in them, get them with people in, and more people will come. Invite a friend on steam everytime you play, invite 2....whatever
We gave you the land, and you own it! Now you gotta be like Ray and build a pretty baseball field inside our lands, so that "people will come". The more people and magic is going on at the ballfield, the more random people will want to come and experience the "thriving" atmosphere. [Field of dreams metaphor]
Right now, this community just isn't giving us the drive in-game that we need. We need more, we need hardcore fanatics that will give up a date with an ugly girl to play a few hours of GE:S. Not only that but make videos and send them to people showing them a cool bit of gameplay they might not know exists. Show off the mod in interesting ways, and chat about GE:S on gaming forums even after you play your ass off. We simply need more.
The team' persistence and professional quality has transcended us into the stratosphere as far as downloads (topping 100,000 on moddb alone). And now we need the players who
love our mod to really give the world of downloaders an image that we are "thriving" playerbase, and it simply is not being shown to the world as that so far.
Power to the people, none to us. So make us proud