95,000

Yes; 95,000.

There are 25 listed NA/EU servers.
6 of which are EU.
Right off the bat, doesn't that sound a little light for EU players? But, writing this with an NA-centric bent, let's table that for now.
SE has stated that the *max* their servers can handle as far as concurrent players is 5,000. And from what we've seen so far, they're sticking to pretty hard caps and 1017ing anybody trying to get in above that 5k mark.

This leaves NA with 19 servers, even including the Legacy servers. That's 95,000 players. Bear in mind, Square was crowing about having well over a million beta sign-ups, and then talking about how great their pre-sales numbers were. And most modern MMOs face retention issues, not initial population issues. The catch is generally in keeping players past the first month, which is why you see so many boom-to-ghost-town populations. That's just the way a lot of us MMO players are, we'll gladly give a wide range of games that first month to check them out, and move on if it doesn't grab us. It's a pretty widely recognized pattern in MMOs at this point.

Which is why it's unfortunate that just for our region (and come on, we're all being good little boys and girls and strictly playing in our own regions right, no sneaky running off to the neighboring regions and playing there?) we have a hard cap of 95k players. With no system in place aside from server restarts and hiccups to boot the perpetual afk population, most of us are left out in the cold.

And that worries me, because first impressions are huge for MMOs given the fickle nature of most player bases and the increasing number of choices for what to play. I'm worried that this is going to drive/keep people away from what, when it works, is a promising and overall enjoyable game. Square dropped the ball quite badly on their estimates, and the mess that was Beta 4 showed them that they needed a response badly. They did add new servers, 3 if memory serves. In response to the servers being crushed, they added 15,000 to the total capacity at the time.

Square: it's been 2 weeks since beta 4, I hope that when you do your overhaul this week you provide us with the capacity we actually need, as well as the flexibility to shift existing and new characters around to allow us to play with the people that we came to this game to play with. A lot of us are fragmented as a population, isolated do to server lockouts and character creation restrictions from people we bought this game to play with, and have been forced to progress apart from our friends when and if we are able to log on. Please factor this in when you are moving forward. Your playerbase is what keeps paying your bills.

Players: if Square holds up their end of the bargain and gets their act in gear on the technical side, please remember to keep up our end as well. If your friends are on the fence, tell them honestly what a good game it is (assuming, of course, that earlier condition is met). Spread the word. Help make whatever server you call home a better place. There will be a lot of pissed-off, "one last chance" players when the servers come back up and hopefully stabilize. That's where we can actually help on the retention side. We're the second part of the playerbase-retention equation, the players are going to have a far bigger day to day impact than Square press releases and the like will to anybody playing or trying the game. Be nice to newbies, or at least give them the benefit of the doubt if they'll listen. Answer the occasional question in /shout. Seriously, why is there no region chat? /shout may as well just be renamed. But, if Square can actually prove they are willing to do what it takes on their end, let's try on ours as well so that hopefully the bad taste of this beta/EA/launch can go away before the game gets demoted to a niche playerbase.