I've been playing recently with Pancher, Sushi, Fuzzy and BKP. It is a very good team based game and I enjoy it a lot still when teaming up.
Although I prefer Hardcore servers (they reward a bit more tactical thinking and teamwork gives a larger advantage) and I would not go higher than a 32 players server.
Ideally I would recommend a 24-32 player server.
BF4 is coming soon. If you grab only a few players now, when BF4 is live you will have the handful of players needed to seed the server (which encourages more to join) and BF4 will be very popular. You can't beat the servers that have active and helpful admins.