I don't entirely remember any more, but I take the same approach on most games with private servers.. hit up a server list and look for one that seems appealing to me (mods, rates, no wipes..)
Other: Few years ago I was using that mystical ingame tool called server search. Somehow I stumbled upon this server.
I've played on the cluster for a few days over a year ago, found it via the in-game server list. When I returned to Ark again this year, the cluster was recommended by a friend.
Back in 2018? i was searching on google for an ark server and, i dont remember why, i searched "best ark pve server division" but at the end i really like the name "Ghost Division" because of that:
\m/…(>.<)…\m/
Greetings Mschmidi
I played on a privat server with some really great people, sadly they stoped playing ark and the server owner took it offline.
A few months later i somekind missed Ark and i started Looking for a new one.
After i tried on severel Servers i found GD and i´m still on it.
We stumbled upon one of the GD servers in the Ark server browser, when we were searching for a server with nice rates and ping with our tribemates. A bit of luck I guess 
Back in 2015...or 2016 - don't know for sure but I still think I was playing since the early beginning on the GD Server/s.
found hundreds of screenshots of this time....memories come up
in the past it could be happen that you got wiped when you didn't observe the rules not to use placeholders *lol*
sometimes you unintentionally hoard a lot of dead corpses in your base
or get pixxed off of some Titanos in your base
Party Time 
Thank you for the good time I have had with you all and for the great work of all admins and owners they did since the early beginning. 
Cheers
Balaghan ( Cerux / Maya / Blakkarsson )
Um... I didn't find the cluster.
But the story would sound something like this:
We were banned from another server for raiding the admin and after a short time we were sent to the promised land by the holy Dodo Jesus.
I played ark since alpha, and a group of us played on official and ran a massive public egg farm (back when kibble was dino specific). Everyone quit but me, and it was overwhelming to run by myself. I finally quit for a while and came back to play again a while later, and found that official was now awful and overrun by pillar spam. So, still having the mindset of doing something for the community of ark (think public egg farm) I decided to start, fund, and support my own server cluster. I ran a cluster through survival servers for about 6 months, which had 3 maps (island, ragnarok, and center). As I was the only admin, and also trying to play on the cluster as well, once there were about 60 regular people playing on the cluster and running caves and always needing help, this became unmanageable. So, I communicated a date when the cluster was going to shut down, and then I searched for a cluster to play on that had the same modifiers that I was using on my cluster. So, I started playing on GD at that time back in mid 2018. I quit for a bit due to some life changes, but recently returned around June or July. Any chance I get I tell people to play here and support through patreon 
Not that it's helpful, but I just found the server by searching through the in game server list, looking for the settings in the server title.
I answered such question before, but - Google -> "Best ARK Server" 5 years ago
Was dragged here by my mate Charlie Murphy who doesn't play. Best decision I've made!
My bf introduced me to this cluster
Was introduced by my friend on steam , but then she left the cluster short time after
Remember i was so freakin tired of official servers regret putting 2k+ in that crap. Searched on private servers in google and GD popped up gave it a try rest is history 
Remember some old mods we had back like steampunk mod, Was it really like 5 years ago that GD had steampunk mod? (says i joined 2018 but feels like i joined much earlier than that).
I found the cluster on the list of servers on the ark website
It wasn't the 1st on the list and I looked at servers at random with my only selection criteria being that the sever should be in europe
I'm glad I got to this one
Found about this cluster through my tribe mate and truly glad he introduced it to me!
Played a bunch on official on ps4, met a deranged weeb irl and was convinced to buy ark on pc and brought here
I was looking for an active PVE server and on the server list online and it stood out
i think i found it on ark server.net
