Dev response to Server Merge please.

[Pixela]

But all those 500 people aren't actually PLAYING. They're afk. They're mules, They're bots. Or whatever.
Also, I think people are throwing together the job imbalance (both perceived and real) and the server populations into one issue.
When casuals/returners/new players/people who want to play other jobs face the "we can only clear this content with 5 relic RNGs and a mythic WHM"-type of baloney, they see the lack of shouts and lack of interest in events and lack of invites as a population problem. And to some extent it is.
The rampant cheating and use of third-party tools isn't helping, either.
Not to mention, there have been posts from people who lead or are in event linkshells, and even they have problems, either filling slots due to lack of interest, or feeling punished by the HP-scaling of events and drop-rates that reward less people. So there's a game design issue, too.

If 1/4 are afk (which they aren't, many idle but keep an eye on shout and LS chat), that's still a ton of people and comparable to almost any other mmo (oh and afk people used to be a far bigger issue in the past, rolanberry was packed with bazaars and whole linkshells would afk showing off loot before Abyssea). People only complain because they compare one number with another without putting more thought into it than that, let's say 300-400 people at lowest taking into account bazaars? that's still a huge number of players online at one time (and it peaks well above 1k during server peak). Also please keep in mind that this is not regional servers, it's JP/EU/NA all in one.

As I said, the problem is that so many people have the shout mentality. They don't want to join shells anymore because Abyssea ruined their idea of how endgame can be done and the content is not keeping up with that mindset change.

Square can fix these issues in 4 ways:
A) Regional servers? Want that forced on you? This is where a lot don't understand how things work, a dev will never count population numbers by EU or US peak it will be server peak...which is JP prime time.
B) Nerf much of the content like they did on FFXIV so it is 100% pugable. How about that?
C) Force people to join linkshells again by blocking content off from puggers (again like they did in FFXIV by removing "top content" from the doody finder).
They did this in the past by adding large price tags to enter (1 mill per dynamis entry etc), they also had very low drop rates meaning you had to have point systems.
D) Add some kind of group finder system for specific content, again if they do this they will have to go with B.
I don't particularly like any of those options but they are all still better than MORE PEOPLE in the pig pen.

As an added note, their are 988 people online right now on Sylph. There are still almost no shouts at all, certainly no more or less than when their are 500.