Housing for me might as well not exist.

[Darthgummibear]

Not everyone knows this. Balmung isn't the behemoth it used to be. In fact, new players are sometimes directed there upon character creation. (Source: I created an alt and it wanted to direct me there, talk about shocked.) So let's not assume new players went to Balmung deliberately when they may simply be unaware of the server's overpopulation history.

This exactly. Balmung was the first choice given on my datacenter.