I discovered interstate when I read a news post on planetbf.com: " a mod with nitrous deloreans is comming out in 3 days"
My brother and I thought it was a back to the future mod. Out curiosity got the best of us.
At the same day, the Siege mod was announced to release on the same day.
I remember looking through all seeing eye and seeing hundreds of servers for interstate and hundreds for siege and tons of people were playing. The first game of interstate I ever played was countryside, it was jam packed with 64 players. when the round ended, I tried out siege.
I swear interstate was extremely popular.
back then I do remember a server that ran deathrace 1 and 2 only, I don't remember if it was the ISR server.