I think people assume iZone is bad because, I think everyone can agree on this, while Matt was manager for Zone no real development work was getting done, and the playercount was roughly 30 - 40 players. As well as this, Matt decided to introduce an events team and hired roughly 5 - 6 more players, hence the joke why it seems everyone is hired on iZone.
However, when Tashkin took over, development has picked up, there are consistent updates now, and the playercount has tripled. Yeah it's not 1000+ like Era or Classic, but give it time. Overall, Zone has become an interesting server to play on, though I work for Zone, I see myself playing it more and more each day.