Remember Everyone, FFXIV is a dying game :^)

[Bonbori]

Why does EU has so smol playerbase. >.<

They're all on Crystal playing with us :P

A lot of us play on Aether, Primal and Crystal because the ping is tolerable and there's simply more players around. It's particularly great as a night owl.

Purrrrrtty much ^^

I can't speak for anyone else but despite living on the EU side of the world, I prefer NA servers in online games, by a long shot. In FF14, I started on Primal, transferred to Aether and eventually ended up on Crystal after the recent shuffle. All throughout, my ping has been relatively good (and I suspect, with how bad US internet is, I probably have better connection than many people who actually live there XD) and I enjoy playing with a large English-speaking population that's predominantly active around evening/night which is the only time I get to play without constant distractions.

Conversely, my past experiences with EU servers in other games (predominantly SWTOR) gave me the impression that the community was very fragmented by language barriers and timezones. Every time I used matchmaking, it was a coin toss whether I could even communicate with whoever I got, and even finding a guild with a consistently active roster was a challenge. Eventually, I decided to eat the couple ms of extra ping in exchange for consistency and have had much better online experiences since.