Even with a large group I preferred playing 2x or higher server, it's not just the resource gathering increase but the leveling increase itself, which actually opens up options to advance regardless of resource. The "Journey" steps will take some of the sting out of the 1x pace server as they are great for leveling, but that is also a fairly railroaded method or idea, for what is supposed to be a sandbox. Groups suffer less on the resource grind obviously, but having more members doesn't mean you are going to level faster and unlock more crafting options for the actual progress, it just means you are going to be able to craft that shit quicker when you do unlock it, compared to a solo or duo.
Guess we'll see how it plays out, but from my experience with the game, 1x is slow on all accounts.