I think the best thing would have been to have something like GW2, where you have "overflow" servers for each server and allow people to be invited to a server (once full) so friends/guildmates/families can stick together and just put people into the overflow server so they can play and place them into a server queue that lets them join when it's ready.

That way peopel can play even when teh server is full and join once it isn't.