Unfortunately they have to try and stop people from going to the most popular servers, or otherwise they become unstable and queue times appear even when there isn't new content. I played a game that allowed everyone to make characters on any server and people always go to the most popular one. Trust me, it's better like this in the long run. Would you rather wait a few days to create your character, or spend hours in queue and suffer extreme lag over the next years to come? SE's way of handling things serves the majority well even though new players are inconvenienced.

Throwing money at the problem won't solve it either as far as I've seen. Increasing the server cap and improving hardware is only a temporary solution, and a costly one too. If players notice that there's room on the big server again, they will quickly fill it up to the new limit. I'd much rather they gave permanent free transfers from big servers, with a small incentive attached (title or something).

For now, if you really want to play with friends on a big server, keep trying to make the character at different times of day and week. Others who don't have real life friends to play with just yet: please try a smaller server. You and your fellow players will be happier that way.