Yeah I deleted everything in the 7d2dsaves folder (except I renamed my serveradmincustom file)
In fact after my 1st attempt I deleted steamapps, Mods, Data, and the _Data folders and redownloaded the game from the hosting panel, and then reinstalled Wotw over the fresh install, with no previous data, and the loop still occurs.
I'm not sure I have it installed properly though. From the BBM version, I uploaded Mods, Data, and 7DaysToDie_Data folders in the game's root directory, overwriting Data files. Then I uploaded the DLL file from the server DLL zip into 7DaysToDieServer_Data/Managed folder, overwriting the Assembly-CSharp.dll file in there.