It was actually at max capacity for an hour or two today I was having issues and had to relog, took me around 5 minutes because there were no slots open.
You should give it another shot sometime. Yes there's a lot of grief, yes there's a spawn killing issue, but to be fair, that's just due to it being allowed. But honestly, the server has a pretty great community, it's just highly competitive. Personally, I don't do pvp at all and I'm still loving it.
My advice, get far from spawn before you even consider thinking about getting resources or building anything. Gather any food you can and just run till you think you're safe, then double that distance.
Also, I have an idea to help get new players to stick around and not get frustrated too quickly. Maybe give a 15-30 minute pvp-immunity the first time someone joins the server, that way they have some time to get away from spawn. DarkRubbs idea sounds pretty great as well, since there's a lot of needless spawn killing going on.