Stop asking for a playtime cap; you don't know what you're doing

[ArkenaeuxBelmont]

The solution to AFK bypassers in the past was to ... wait for it ... reset each world at a random time. No programming involved. 15 or 20 minute warning before the reset. It worked wonders, although I must say it increased the queue for logging on because players will attempt to log back in afterwards. So, your 4000 player queue becomes a 10000 player queue, which goes down almost immediately. However, if you managed to get into the game 10 minutes before shutdown, you're going back to the end of the queue when the world is reset.

I'd rather get up at 5 am and spend most of the morning online.

Not entirely sure that would be a good solution either, as that would possibly crush tons of players doing progression content, duty finder content, etc.