returning player, server questions

[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.