Real towns simply do not exist here. just doing /t list by online shows the issue.

The MOST active town usually has 3-5 players online even in peak hours, with some exceptions where there Is 7 people in a single town online at a time but that happens very rarely.

I know some may say "but in real life there are towns with just 2 people" or something like that, but just try thinking this way:

When did you last time see a town election happen? When did the last time a town rank mean something for anyone? do we really have a functional "political" aspect of the game? or are we all just pretending to be towns and nations and in reality its just a bunch of "faction" players?

Make a base, claim a base, stack up on necessary things for PvP, and then go around the world and "raid others", sounds like factions to me.

There are of course exceptions and differences from factions. You can actually physically build a town. But it just goes as far as that and no further.
That town is gonna be empty, the Mayor is gonna be the "supreme leader" and whoever joins is not gonna stay for long. There are CERTAINLY not going to be people who are trying to climb the "social ladder" and acquire ranks in town or people who are unhappy with how it is running and want to make a difference. There are just not going to be any people most likely in that town.

And what is worse is that all the towns are like that, there is not a single place with a living "political" or "social" circle. I understand that some people do prefer to just claim a piece of land for themselves and do their own thing without relying on or being bothered by someone else.
But at what point does it become a problem? I would guess 80% of people are like that.

Or even worse, maybe most of the people who are creating their own town are not intending to be alone, but they just can not get anyone to join them at all.

And when you look at the towny game mechanics it becomes clear why is it like that.

Towns in real life exist out of necessity, and if we all could just go away somewhere and build our own town and become mayor, most of us probably would instead of dealing with any problems of society.

People who come to server are basically just given the opportunity to instantly become a Mayor, a "King" or even an "Emperor" if they choose to also create their own nation so why not? If we can all just instantly take the highest rank there is, the entire concept of any kind of "progression" or even "politics" simply becomes irrelevant. And after they realize nobody is gonna join their town because they are all busy being a bunch of "Kings" of their own, they are simply going to quit.

And do not get me wrong, this is not about me being mad that nobody joins my town, or trying to "rule over people" and not being able to do it.
First thing I did when I came back was join someone else's town, but it quickly became evident it was not a real functioning town, I was the only person around and most of the time it was just an empty piece of claimed land that I do not have permissions in. Why would I stay?

I simply left the town and decided to create my own and then I realized that even after I sunk probably more than 20 hours of playing over the course of 4 days nobody joined me.

I am not holding people to different standards than myself because I decided to create my own town and then complain about why everyone else does that. I am just saying that the core game mechanics make it so that for each person creating their own town is the best option, and the fact that i did that only works to prove my point.

I think there should be some change that makes it impossible for people to just go their way and create their own town. Once joining an existing town is the best option, and people do start doing it, then "natural selection" will make it so that most of the towns that did remain in existence are worth joining.

I do not think it is bad for new people to not be able to just claim some random piece of land, they can always join a town and get their chunk, two or ten.
OR if they do not, they can do something about it to make a change.