You need to tell your friends it doesn't matter if there's 6 or 6000 on the server, most content is designed for low man now. Asura is overcrowded by today's standard and they have congestion issues. Sounds to me the friends are just making excuses not to play. But if they are serious then really, just switch servers and change your name and put in your bazaar comment <the player formally known as blank on blank server> if it matters enough. You will find it does a remarkably good job to your mental state after losing a long time name. I get it. It's yours. You came up with it. My main may not be 100% original but after 14 years I have come up with some mule names I am proud of.
Some of us would love to lose our names. You have an idea on what it's like to spend 14 years being judged because your name looks like Voldemort? take that idea and multiply it by 100. Nevermind that my second character on my account since day one is named Voldemortt, because Voldemort was already taken. I was brand new at the time to MMORPGs and the idea was to create a cunning warrior and a deadly alt mage, before I realized what sub jobs were. Voldermolt was my choice for my warrior and Voldemortt for my mage, entirely because I got tired of being told 'name already taken' on all my other choices, even names I thought I was being original and I wasn't. So I came up with a ton of names based off Voldemort that weren't lazy ripoffs like Voldemortt or Voldimort or Voldbmort and were not pronounced as Voldemort, and the one that got through first was Voldermolt. For Voldemortt it was going to be Voldemort followed by as many ts as it took because at that point I didn't care, i was going to be a lazy ripoff for my mage character. Could have been Voldemorttttt. Voldemortt got by first.
((I just want to take this opportunity to point out that at the time I had no clue that Voldemort was bald. I don't even know if his first appearance on screen was before or after I started FFXI. I was never a harry potter nut. I've never read the books. I just thought the name was cool and I knew Voldemort was a wizard. FFXI > red mage > gotta name it voldemort! Durrrr! The fact that my character is a bald hume is entirely chance. At the time I had a shaved bald head and it resembled me the most *shrug*))
But nobody wants to hear it, I obviously misspelled Voldemort by accident despite that at the time you couldn't last a half hour on the internet without coming across the name VOLDEMORT. In very large part this is why I can be such an ass to people I don't know and I do apologize for it but that's where it comes from, years of hearing shit over a name and seeing people use the /scared command because all they see is Voldemort when they look at my name. I make no excuses for my shitty attitude over the years, I'm merely revealing where it all started. I had the power to not be an ass. I chose ass. That's how it is and my older self suffers for it as I don't believe I deserve to play amongnst others for my past behavior. I play solo most of the time if friends aren't playing at the time. As a result I can't stay top geared in FFXI like I do other games. I'm always years behind. That's my way to pay for my sins. FULL DISCLOSURE: It has been a long time since anyone gave me shit over my name. The last person to do it wasn't actually doing it to insult me, I understood things and she and her husband became great allies of mine to get stuff done. So it hasn't been happening for all 14 years. Most left playing have grown up and aren't immature babies anymore online, for many years now.
In short, just be glad your only worry is losing your name. It could be way worse. I really would just pay the fee and jump ship, if you are serious about playing the game. For what it's worth I'm the complete opposite. I want to switch servers just to change my name to the all mine original name I came up with 10 years ago for MMORPGs(by the create a char method with current name on another world) but I don't really care to deal with the hassle. It matters alot but at any given time a group of friends may finally log in for a few months before they log off for another year +. I gotta take'm when I can get them. At least until I forgive myself enough to try to play with others again, but even to this day I have 'wrong think' opinions like how people need to stop complaining about blank job because it deserves it's pewpew moment after 15 years of being shat on by players, so I probably won't be invited to dynamis supper any time soon by anyone in the end game scene. I did group with peeps for the 99 cap fight and the final mission fight for rhapsodies, but that's it for many years now.