What do you think makes a private server "successful"?

I ask this question as someone who has been part of the Maplestory private server "community" (not sure if community is the best word to describe it, but oh well) for a good number of years now. I wouldn't call myself a "server hopper" persay, but I've tried out a decent number of other servers just to see what they offer. Most servers are marketed towards Maplers who prefer the old-school/pre-BB experience, and the only real thing that distinguishes them are the features they offer. Some have higher or lower EXP/Meso/Drop rates in order to make things more or less challenging, some make HP Washing "Optional", some rebalance classes, some offer custom content...you get the idea.

Anyway, this question popped into my head back when I was trying out a server called "AvalonMS". I remember having a few conversations with a streamer there who was currently in the process of trying to find a server to settle down with. This fella had hoped that Avalon would do well, but eventually ended up leaving due to the fact that he just couldn't see the server becoming successful and staying alive for more than a few months. I don't remember his exact words, but I think he said something along the lines of "Private Servers need to be run with at least a little bit of professionalism, like a business almost". And the owners of the server, as he put it, weren't very professional. One of their big issues was that they weren't transparent enough with the community in terms of what kind of content/updates they would do with their game. I actually tried looking around for their server just a minute ago, and they seemed to have disappeared off the face of the internet. No big surprise there.

So yeah, that got me wondering how some the private servers that have been around for a while stay successful. And when I say successful, I generally mean they can maintain a decently-sized active playerbase for an extended period of time. Which, if you think about it, is already hard enough as it is. Maplestory, in any form, whether it be the official game or the private servers, isn't a super popular MMO. The official game is no where near as popular as it was during its prime. And so, you would think that the subset of gamers/Maplers that prefer oldschool private servers over the official game is probably a pretty small demographic.

Obviously we do have SOME successful servers like Royals and Legends, which have been around for years. And both of these servers hold a pretty large percentage of private server players. I mean hell, once you go past the 6th or 7th ranked server on gtop100, you start getting into the servers that have less than 100 active players. Not to mention the fact that the private server community is probably dwindling, since there are only so many people that have both played pre-BB Maple AND would prefer it over the modern versions. And eventually those people will probably move on with their lives and stop playing Maple entirely. I actually have to wonder how many more years we have before Maplestory Private Servers die off completely. I hope we at least have a little bit longer.

So with all this information in mind, how do you guys think a private server becomes long-lasting and successful like Royals, Legends, etc.? Is it the features? Is it how the server is administrated? How often the developers release updates? I'd like to have a discussion about this.

P.S. : Just for the record, I am asking this question on other forums just to get more diverse opinions. So if you play multiple servers (which I doubt many people do) and you recognize this discussion of mine on a different forum, that's probably why. On a related note, I would prefer if this discussion didn't devolve into a "which server is better" fight. I understand many people are loyal to their server of choice, and some people might be inclined to say "Royals is actually shite tho, wtf are you talking about?" just because I mentioned Royals in my post. Yes, I know Royals is not well-liked outside of its own playerbase. I'm not saying I disagree with you, I'm just saying that it's not the point of this discussion. Just wanted to throw that out there as a disclaimer. We cool? Cool.