returning player, server questions

[Kuo]

i have start play again not too long ago and chose Cuctuar. anyone know how the pop of it is like? I almost have been wondering about switching servers.

[Sagittarian]

I have no idea how accurate this data really is - https://ffxivcensus.com/. There's no way to figure out how much time those active players are actually logged in for.

[Amzz]

If you are switching servers Balmung Gilgamesh and Sargeras? Or something like that are the best to go to. They are sometimes a little hard to get on but Ive heard they have the best populations.

[Rinari]

I don't know what Cactuar is like, but I'm enjoying life on Faerie. It's a middle population server. I'm always making friends and have never felt like there was a shortage of other players in any aspect of the game. The only downside seems be that Aether data center is unstable since the patch... likely because Balmung on Gilgamesh are also on it.

Balmung is the unofficial RP server and is one of the big old servers. That combo draws so many people that even the apartments are sold out. Keep that in mind if you think of Balmung. It might be too big. Faerie has a little bit of RP. Not as much as I'd like, but I don't really focus on that anyway and I enjoy having an apartment with the prospect of a house not being unattainable. If you want Balmung or Gilgamesh, you'll probably have to use a paid character transfer, as those two are locked down.

[LunaFaye]

If you want Balmung or Gilgamesh, you'll probably have to use a paid character transfer, as those two are locked down.

It's actual possible to make characters on these servers in the early mornings or during late nights on weekdays for right now. Of course that won't happen on weekends and the moment a new patch hits, there is probably not a chance to create new characters but as it stands right now, you'll have a good chance of creating characters on these servers if you pay a little bit attention to the prime and none prime times.

While I have characters on the Aether data center, I was never a huge fan of it, but I would also suggest checking out primal data center. Servers like Excalibur or Hyperion aren't a bad choice. It all depends on how populated you want it, and how much you can tolerate the "git gud" mentality, that you find a lot on Gilgamesh

[SeriousxSarcasm]

Depends, does high pop = "better" in your opinion? Cactuar has an average population, it's pretty much right in the middle last I checked. But it's very active. Have you looked around at all? I honestly thought it was a high-pop server for the longest time because when I got an alt into Gilgamesh it was a bloody ghost town (except for the 20+ bots running around, lol). I think you should look more at the community vibe of servers instead.

Edit:
OK, bad things first: Cactuar is very much a Crafting/Gathering server. Stuff is expeeeensive, because everyone and their dog has a crafting profession (and a growing raid community to feed those crafts to), so you pretty much need one to earn any gil (I went with gathering because it's easier, XD You make a killing on gathering too, because those hundreds of crafters need materials lol. I made 1 million gil solely off Elm logs in... roughly 3 weeks?). Also apparently we're getting all the RPers that are tired of the login queues on Balmung. :P Which to me is kinda "meh", but maybe it's a positive thing for some people? XD Overall it's an active server, but it's not crazy over-populated, so there are times during the night when it feels really quiet.

Good things: Very active economy. There's a lot of buying/selling/trading going on between the gatherers, crafters and raiders. If you learn how to read the market, you're set.
Active and friendly FC/linkshell communities. Lots of them omg, so there's no shortage of choices. Avoid the ones that spam invites in the city-states lol.
Growing raid community. Used to be just a few groups that were really devoted, but lots of the more hardcore FCs started taking midcore players under their wings and teaching them the raiding ways, so it's been sprouting up from there.

I'm sure I could list more stuff, but then it will take too much time lol.