Would populating the game help populate the servers?

Right now one thing that bothers me alot, is how unpopulated the game is NPC wise, once you get outside of towns. Other then 4 shops no place to buy/sell, the outposts are nothing but quest stops, camps are just to do leve's and behests, and two entire zones don't even have behests or leve's to do. Exploring is nice, but beyond dragon head there isn't really anything beyond the starter zones, you have camps with 2 npc's but no leve's go to them, no behests that I've seen.

So anyone think that adding shops to outposts, or improving the 4th and 5h zones with more stuff, and especially opening the 4th town help? PVE content be good, but these are things that could be worked on and added while they fix out the PVE changes. They havn't really done anything to make the rest of the world a reason to explore or go too, so everyone sticks to the same 3 towns and especially uldah.

i wouldn't mind a general shop and a mini levecounter that has the levequests for that camp. Would save anima. But then again i wouldn't mind the reset removal of levequests either maybe limit the gil/item rewards.

but ffxi didn't have that many places with npc. But i don;t see why they can't add at least a shop at each camp or a levequest counter.

I would say no. The lack of Npcs had no effect on XI with server population.

3 Things will populate the servers

1) Content
2) Making worthwhile content outside Uldah (put all the best leves in 1 zone and it is obvious why the whole server is there)
3) More People... MMO sub count attracts more mmo players one of the reason WoW got so huge, person looking for a new mmo and sees 1 at 550k and 1 at 6million which one are they more likely to try, especially if it is their first mmo.

SE's issue are point 1 and 3 more then anything. They need content to hold the sub count and get fans back, but unless they can attract a respectable subcount players will not be willing to invest time in the game.

Rank 50 leves and Behest, PLEASE.
PLEASE.