The game isn't designed for large population servers because not a lot of resources naturally respawn therefore high pop servers require active admins to respawn in game resources and you are just not going to get that on a public, non password protected server.

Secondly, the game isn't really made for playing with strangers. Before you can make a ward, your stuff can be looted and if you die or log out in the world, people can access your item cache or just jump in your boat and steal it. Then you will get idiots who block resources, block access to the boss stones, boss summoning, it is really easy to troll in this game if you wanted to.

It takes about 15 mins of search in LFG to find a large pop community and then however much time it takes to apply on their discord and wait to be approved / white listed.

It's well worth it knowing you are in a large community who isn't going to steal your stuff.