Heh, the mysterious grey rabbit explains hisself here:

http://monolith.idlegames.com/battleserver/

The reason why you always have some grey servers is that versions 1.23 and 1.24 (TSF) are not compatible. If you start 1.23, you can't join TSF servers and if you start TSF you can't play in 1.23 servers. Simple as that.

The lack of quality severs and cool people is that online play is slowly dying (which sucks, yes). Try TSF on a weekend (preferably sunday) and very early your time. You may find a few people then (too bad i'm personally NEVER able to get up early on a sunday :-).