Why does mw2 online launch deathmatch games with only 2-3 people?

It says you need more then that amount of people to start the match, but it instantly starts it without waiting for more players and honestly, I want to play a match with more than 3. I have only had the opportunity to play with a full server ONCE which was the first time I played multiplayer team deathmatch.

Someone please tell me how to join a match with more because it says there are like 500+ people online. Campaign was good and all, but it was pretty short and Special Ops kinda sucks. I don't want my money to be a waste so can someone tell me how to join a bigger server? Should I just buy black ops to do online?

Unfortunately, this game is very old, and out of all the people that play, the system needs to find a match with decent connections, in a fairly quick period of time. Every connection needs to have a connection with minimal latency with the server that you are connected to, in order to be matched up for play. For example, players that are in Europe would not have a decent connection with the people in the US.

On top of this, 500 really isn't that many people, from all over the world. When I played, even after 2 years of the game's initial release, I would still have issues connecting at certain periods of the day, when the numbers would fall below 1000 online.