Ah, this brings back memories. I remember joining a server called AnCap Minecraft way back in 2010. Within a year, they rebranded to Civcraft, which became one of the greatest Minecraft servers of all time. Five years of drama and shenanigans later, and it was all over. When I was involved (during 1.0), I regularly saw the server full at over 300 players at night.
There was a sophisticated economy; there were wars; there were many accusations of cheating (a few of which I got to investigate).
I was one of the admins for Civcraft 1.0, though I didn't do much.