Quote Originally Posted by alazar14 View Post
Thanks for all of the great info! I have a much more clear idea of what I need to be doing with my RDM now. The only issue I can see coming up is perhaps finding folks to help me do the NMs in Escha-Zitah. Do you have any tips for getting folks to help out with this? <
I am surprised that you have 2 ls's and yet come here to the forums to ask general questions about how to get caught up. Are they of no help to you at all? If so, perhaps try to make friends elsewhere. It's not necessarily about the server you're on; even the small servers have social ls's with friendly players who are more than capable of low-manning some of those NMs and letting you lot drops that are otherwise left to rot. They may not advertise themselves, so you might need to find them through word of mouth (or just straight up ask someone politely for help, and see if they offer to befriend you).

Quote Originally Posted by Jin_Uzuki View Post
I really want to know how people survived in 2006 if they think 400 players are a lot and enough.
In 2006, people still spent a significant amount of game time leveling. Back then, it was to your advantage to have as many players as possible seeking invites, to quickly build your exp/merit party. The range of player experience also meant that a great majority weren't bothering with endgame material. Now leveling up to 99 takes a few hours at most, and the servers are top-heavy with fully leveled players who have nothing to do *but* endgame. Given that most of the "endgame" events of 2006 can now be solo'ed, there simply isn't enough of that material for a large player population. And the more recent endgame events of course have been programmed to discourage you (or flat out prevent you) from bringing more than 6 players. Regardless of just how much you might feel the effect of being on a large vs small server in terms of competition for entering instanced events or for farming limited mobs/triggers, your basic problem lies in actually finding 5 other players to do those events with you. Whether that's easier on a larger or smaller server is debatable.