Honestly my situation is kind of a funny edge case. Not zero, not inherited, something in between that the material drop didn't really have a name for.
The project had been running for a year before I joined as CM. No community manager, no team presence, just one-way announcements and patch notes dropping into the void. The CEO showed up so rarely in chat that I only figured out he was the CEO from stalking his profile. Nobody else even knew until I tell the community lol.
So technically I inherited a server. But what I inherited was closer to silence than a community.
What actually happened is that me and two guildmates just started showing up. No supporter role, no deal, no benefits. We answered questions, helped newcomers, kept the energy alive, all because we genuinely loved the game. For a long time we were just volunteers with no authority, doing CM work because someone had to.
My guildmates kept telling me to apply for the role. I never did. I didn't want to. Being free meant I could be the first one to call out a bad patch publicly, and also the first one clapping when they actually got something right. That position felt more honest to me than having a title.
So I stayed outside. On purpose.
Then the CEO reached out directly. And that changed everything, not because the role suddenly looked appealing, but because it felt like genuine trust from someone who had actually been watching. That's a different thing entirely. When the project you put your whole heart into asks you to contribute from the inside, you say yes. Not for the title. Because it meant something.
By the time it was official, I already had context most CMs spend months trying to build. The OGs knew and trust me more than they do to the core team because they watched me show up before it meant anything. New members saw me as their first point of contact naturally.
Building from zero teaches you infrastructure. Inheriting teaches you how to read a room. What I learned is that sometimes you have to build the room first, without ever planning to own it.