I feel like the "majority of servers were using slate or some variation thereof" type statement is deceptive. Because yeah I saw a lot of freebuild servers or private (I'm making some cool thing) servers with a population of like 1 or 2 players. The really popular servers though (floating 20 or more players) tended to use complicated maps.
I liked maps, they made my job easy, all I needed was an idea and I could just use some default terrain mesh to get it done. Now I have to assemble a team just to create terrain that can work within the confines of whatever I'm doing; which means little to nothing ever gets done, lol.
RIP maps though. Guess I need to get over my laziness or something; though I gotta say, those 60 player survival servers using rotondo's old zombie mod (Which he really needs to fix btw) and the old GCF city maps were something else.