Well, there's also the new world joiners. Everyone will spend their first chunk of resources completely on mines (for the most part... if I am mistaken about the normal starting methods of O players, then...) and then you have to build the statue and buy the paladin. Considering the overwhelming amount of time this could theoretically take, just considering that the pally takes 5 hours to build regardless, then it's not that much of a surprise that only 1/4 of the people in the world have recruited their paladin already. Regardless of method, anyone who started this world less than about 7 hours ago I would not expect to have a paladin.