Everyone is playing 1.9 prerelease now, therefore no one can play on a 1.8 server.
You imply im not treating it like a pre-release
A pre-release is
most likely full of bugs and should therefore not be used as a primary installation. If people can't play on the server due to version differences it's their own fault for not using the stable release.
Anyway, is the server going to be up soon? I played a bit yesterday, and it's really nice. It's the first Minecraft server I've joined that doesn't lag like crazy.