that's a really good question! i never really got into minecraft multiplayer so i don't really have any experience on the subject. one thing i wish i had expanded on more in the original post is how increasingly homogeneous the communities of different games are now compared to before. i can't speak with any authority but if i had to hazard an unsupported guess, maybe some of it is spillover from other games contemporary with minecraft that did have managed servers. i don't really know though.