Why resident areas are not popular?

[Jojoya]

I mean literally, ward where my house in is a total ghost town and I honestly dont understand why. It have everything that Limsa has for example, summoning bells, market boards, also material suppliers and junkmongers which are pretty useful for crafters since Terebinth for example goes for 400 gil on my server on mb -- can be bought for 60 at material supplier. So really, what does Limsa have that residential areas does not? I understand that cities has job guilds, quests, Grand Company outlets but is it really enough to remove all population from housing areas?

When there are only 30 house owners in a ward/sub-ward, why do you expect all thirty of those players to be online and sitting in the ward at the same time you are?

Those hundreds of players you see cruising through Limsa may not have a house and even if they do, it's probably in one of the other 143 wards/sub-wards. They aren't going to come visit your specific ward just on the off chance you might be there.

[Alyanna_Elingval]

Well, aside from the obvious that they're more players in Limsa because you have non homeowners as well, everything in Limsa is together in one place. If I'm not mistaken they're more MBs in a 30 person ward than there are in major city, and somehow the junkmonger, material supplier and other NPCs aren't near any of them.

If there were one central place in each ward with two marketboards, and all the NPCs that you could teleport to directly from your house I think you would see more people.

Aside from that it's not surprising. My neighborhood is a lot of single professionals and not a lot of kids and I hardly ever see anyone aside from the occasional dog walker when I watering the grass or doing something outside. People have other things they're doing away from home.