As many as 72 in the PoP era. Which is crazy looking back on it.
I'm not proud of those days, but it did help me realize the key to managing any large group of people: make it feel like work, make everyone believe that it is a job and not a leisure activity so that you feel obligated to stay despite a complete lack of anything resembling fun.
So, yeah, I can imagine this actually happening. If you could do it with EverQuest, you can probably manage to achieve it with Minecraft.