Are load restrictions blocking specific accounts?

It seems strange to me that people i know have been logging in and out of the same world i play on all day, yet i have been told the server is full, and have been for days. I'm starting to suspect the restrictions don't just cut people off from the world based on number of people in the world at the current time, but that it is actually only allowing certain accounts on an arbitrary list to log in, period.

Say a server allows 100,000 people to play at a time. What should happens is when the server reaches or nears that limit, any player trying to log in is denied access or put in a queue. It just feels to me though that a possibly random selection, or just a chunk of accounts on the list, are the only ones even allowed to log in, regardless of the number actually logged in, and everyone not on the list is outright locked out. It would mean that SE decided that to avoid too many players on a server at once, it would only allow a small amount of players access at all, and would be keeping the rest of them from even being able to log in.

Of course i'm not stating this as fact, but i'm wondering if anyone has opinions on this. Could this be possible? Do you think this could or might be happening? I'd hope not, but it seems strange that i haven't been able to play for days, while others on the same world log in and out freely.