Check on
http://toomanyservers.com to see where all the servers are at, my advice is to find one in Deathmatch go to minecraft and keep refreshing until it goes down which will be another 10 seconds or so (normally) for it to go back up, then you will be in the lobby, currently, in 24 man games, there are 5 maps.
1.Survival Games 1 Big Forest, rolling landscape , hardly and buildings 1000 diameter ( i think)
2.Survival Games 2 Abandon city mostly city, (500 diameter)
3.Survival Games 3 Very large jungle with few buildings, start in a mountain (1000 diameter i think) not sure
4.Breeze Island One main island with tallish hills and pathways to the beach, a couple of little islands smallest map not sure on diameter
5.Overgrown Arena Map 3 without the hill - my view, dont know on diameter but its quite big
By pressing /v 1 or /v 2 etc you vote for the map you want to play, after 5 minutes, the map with the most votes is played, in the event of a tie, i "think" its random.
Regular Players get 1 vote
Iron Donors 2
Gold Donors 3
Diamond Donors 4
VIP 5
Console 9001
Hope This Helped, Storm