Early game is very boring, although building a massive village with the help of dozens of friends is fun and exciting.
Pandemonium, admittedly, was pretty much dead. We puffed out our chests to prevent people from trying to siege us, which was possible. The majority of the time, we could not muster an army to fight off RUA. We had maybe 10 or 15 actives in the end, out of a members roster of 80+ people. Our peak in power saw about 40-50 active people logging on almost every day for a decent amount of time.