Advertise it weeks/months before start.
Advertise at many forums/sites.
Add some really epic trailer(s) and sexy screenshots.
Make a countdown.
Hire staff who are "famous" on OTLand.
And just as Highlander stated, "The simple fact is, you need people to be excited to play your server. ANY server type can get 100+ players, as long as it is done correctly."
But you need to keep it alive, like Project XDC was fucking amazing, but it has like 10~ players on.
Thronar too.
And yeah, people really like either very good, balanced evolutions, but even more RL maps. If you're going to make a server today, easiest would be 8.6, as it still has the biggest playerbase. If not then go for the current version and then a last resort would be an oldschool server, preferably 7.1-7.7 (no hotkeys).
My favorite servers are oldschool servers, though they don't really succeed too often (Tibianic is a huge exception, due to it being so similar it is to real 7.4 and how they haven't had a reset or shutdown for 3 years now).
What u doing when server started and u have 0 players 
?
