You can quote me if you want, I was there on the launch day for it.
Novabox tried to emulate SCG's business-oriented mindset and had some galling gameplay choices (Air Exchange was a thing in-lore, meaning gasmasks were required for daily life) and thus the whole 'need filter to live' mentality ensured that any semblance of staying outside was quickly scrubbed for practical reasons, which quickly fostered circlejerks. Killing someone became as easy as just slipping their mask off or breaking it out in the streets.
Not to say that you'd want to stay out in the map, anyway. It was a cobbled together shitshow, Kermerd (aka Dremek) had ripped off a dozen maps (even i17 prefabs) and shoved it all together, resulting in the abomination known as City 2. It's so terrible that despite a dozen 'workshop made' fixes I'm still able to abuse certain entities to kill people, should someone have the terrible idea to actually host it. Even the map elevators were a prefab taken from a 2011 gamebanana upload.
Kermerd didn't know how to run it and his chosen 'staff team' were inept, if not downright malicious, and the CivPro faction turned out to have been plucked from day one supporters so naturally it was downright ridiculous as well.
Nothing notable happened on launch aside from a small gathering on a main road, who were quickly - and pretty much instantly - gunned down by a throe of bored cops. I left soon after, and from the first hand accounts I heard, the server was dead within the week population-wise and lost all traction.
