Quote Originally Posted by Sagittarian View Post
Malboro has a number of new players and our Novice Network is fairly nice. I'd still recommend creating characters on servers you are curious about just to see how they feel before transferring.
Quote Originally Posted by Starcoder View Post
She gave no server suggestions, but only for me to "create characters and find out myself" type of comment.
Me saying Malboro has a number of new players and our Novice Network is fairly nice was a suggestion for Malboro :P
I can't give it a strong recommendation for you because you said you are looking for "a more populated server" and I believe we are considered "mid-pop". Leviathan and Malboro are in the same data center so assuming that you are playing during NA active times, there should be people around. There is a definite lull from ~1AM-6AM Pacific with the majority of people being on ~2PM-8PM Pacific. We are not a hardcore raiding server, which seems like a plus for you.
I don't really have experience with other servers so I can't speak to them.

The suggestion to create a new character on any servers you were interested in served 2 purposes.
First, it would confirm that the items you are concerned about are bound to your account. Create a new character, go through the tutorial quest, and check mogmail to see what items are waiting for you. That was the primary reason as that was your stated concern for not creating a new character already.
Second, while you are correct that we've all thrown a lot more than $18 at SE over the years, I've also seen a lot of stories with people who server transferred several times (with associated delays and costs) until they found somewhere they like and I wouldn't want you to be frustrated by transferring only to find you didn't like it. There was an assumption there that you have an account type that allows creation of multiple characters, of course.

I wasn't trying to be curt or dismissive in my earlier response. I had a limited time to write out a response before being offline for 4 days and realize I could have elaborated more.