Dude, if you cannot fathom the difference back then, before launch, and to the situation at hand now, you have some serious comprehension issues. Considering that Feenix's Emerald Dream, the other 1x server that had been around for years, had a peak population of 1.5k at best - usually hovering around 1k, and considering the number of forum accounts created in the weeks before launch was around the same amount...
well, it makes it entirely understandable that the team expected to have 2k players, maybe 3k if they were really lucky. You can find posts here, from before launch, where people are skeptical if the server will even have 1k peak population. Now the server has more than 6k peak population every single day.
You don't need to donate but calling the team liars because of something they could not reasonable foresee is just being an obnoxious asshole for no good reason.