plugins are not compatible, maps are lost, players are gone.
It's not because of that.
For example:
Survival used to be a server without claims, with only simple /tpa and /home, /spawn commands, except it had a thriving community back in the day, even with a donator city run by the head-admin back then, @connor12568 (connorville), and many players were happy with the server. It had a lot of action and pvp, but also a sense of community, friendliness, and people could still build amazing things without fear of destruction, they just had to be smart about it.
Fast-forward to today and survival is flooded with horrible plugins like mob-stacking, and features that most of the community hates, like no pvp in claims.
Not saying that the servers need to 100% travel back in time to exactly how they were.
Just saying that the developers/owner could do a little to fix up some things that the community doesn't like, and restore it just a little closer to how it used to be.