"Many realms had hundreds of players" is more than a bit of an exaggeration.
IIRC, there have only ever been 2 realms in the game that even came close to 200 characters, Perdan and Sirion.
I could have worded that better, I meant "over 100" more than "multiple hundreds". GX had, what, about 60? That's still a third of what some had, and half of what many had.