Returning Player question.

[Atoli]

Most people just suggest that new players join their server to raise the activity there. I'm not even suggesting he should join the server I'm playing on, I'm just saying the servers that advertise themselves as friendly and casual are not actually friendlier in normal PvE encounters or the overworld, they are usually just less populated which makes it harder to find players to do content with once you reach the end.

Also, I'm speaking from personal experience and don't want others to go through the same things I experienced. I played on Ragnarok since the start of ARR, but at some point I got sick of the game and when I returned, I wanted a fresh start. I looked for a new server and got talked into joining a so-called "casual" server with "an active, friendly community"...which actually meant the server was pretty much dead.
That was true for everything to some degree, but especially for end-game content. The amounts of statics (or even just randoms through pf that were capable of farming) was so low that I could count them on one hand (slight exaggeration here, but you get the gist ). The few that were there actually tried to leave the server because it was so hard to find a good replacement if one person left the static.

So no, other servers don't get "shit done" like bigger servers do, because if you sit in pf for 8 hours trying to fill up a farm party because no one joins serious content OR the ones who join have a "we aaaall love each other here and want to live in harmony, so let's not even try to find out who is the reason we don't meet dps checks"-mentality, I wouldn't call that catering to anyone who is actually interested in raiding and the like.
Of course, even low-pop servers have great, dedicated players, but they tend to keep to themselves in tight-knit groups that a new player will not profit from in any way.