It makes sense that people all go to one point to do the raiding: The entire point of sitting down when the player gets home and loads into the game is to get into doing something as quickly as possible so they're playing the game. Sitting in town for hours with nothing to do while waiting for the PF to fill is not really playing the game at all as much as being in an elevator.

Also, I feel like aether is kind of pushing this game a bit too much towards the "sweat" category vs being about "fun". The only reason someone goes to aether is for raiding or to catch a hunt train. No one is going there because they got friends there unless they are native, and from my experience the community that exists over there exists specifically at the raiding hours.