Server 17 is not new, it is, in fact, very very old, the first European server in fact.

As a result, there are VERY few player who are low level and active enough to do sage. Which means there are't enough people below 80 to fill a sage, hence you are in with those people.

Now, seeing 80s might be a bit extreme, but that's probably a result of population distribution. But I fully expect everyone below at least 70 are in the same sage, so you will be fighting at least some 70s.

There is nothing they can do. There probably aren't even enough player below 60 to have their own sage in your cluster even if they tried to cap the level range.

Which means you either don't get a sage (due to insufficient participants)

Or you end up with at least players in the 60s, which are still overwhelming for a 35.

If you * around, it will take 3-4 month before you can be somewhat competitive in sage. Not the best, but... at least get some wins for some rewards.

Alternatively you could go to a different server cluster, where there are more low levels so that the gap won't be so huge. Granted, since early leveling is fast, there still won't be much player below 50. Still, "last" sage on other cluster might cap at low to mid 70s instead of low 80, so you can be competitive in maybe 2 month, much faster. But the problem with that is most of the later servers are kind of desolate. The early servers are the only ones who have lots of people.

At the same time, due to Xserver, half of the competitive stuff, sage, masuri, arena, aren't exactly viable for quite a while. Tbh the only real difference is fox and GNW, maybe a bit of arena before Xserver kicks in.