Asura has always been that popular for a decade even before my server, Pandemonium, merged into.
Asura, Odin, Bahamut, and soon Fenrir are the only servers that seem to be more balanced. Queues are absolutely necessary for a large server.
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"A couple servers are balanced"
No, those servers are too large. If they wer ebalanced, all servers would be in that list of tours. Balanced means ALL the same, not "a couple the same and the others different."
If the full population of the game were more evenly distributed, things like the duplicated instance areas for Ambu and other such measures that were added to mitigate crowding would not have been necessary.
And further, Asura, which has by far the worst botting/RMT problem, would not be standing out in this area. You could split Asura in two and still have totally playable server populations (still larger than most others).
Ask yourself: Is "more people" really worth longer wait times, and some content being entirely locked out by bots at times (COUGH SALVAGE COUGH), more lag in more places, among other issues caused by overcrowding? Regardless of whether or not Asura was "always popular," the point remains: Asura needed special measures to increase its capacity after it became full, something that has never happened before in FFXI's history? The fact that it reached capacity by definition makes it overcrowded.
As with most things in life, things are better somewhere in the middle than at one or the other of two extremes.
"why do they have so many people in new york? So overcrowded! move those people to Monterey so even things out!"
Exactly. Not our fault if people don't do anything to keep their fellow players subscribed or from switching over. People on Facebook are still encouraging the new/returned players to go to a larger server. Even making the auction houses available 24/7 is the biggest reason why players want to switch over. Having enough players on a server is more important than people thought. You don't need me to be around to be happy. You always have players to play with while I play the other game.
Primed for Adventure once again proved that they can have a good time with anyone. Okieeomi didn't talk that much when I played with her but she is still right. You don't trust words, you trust actions. People can tell you anything but actions tell you everything.