Server population and dead accounts
I’m no dev, but I can tell you that it’s not true.
Think about guesting and the Megaserver system. For those to work, there needs to be a separate place where character and account information is stored, and it’s then sent to the world servers as needed. It’s not actually stored “on” that world server.
There’s also the fact that a server that shows “full” during prime hours will often show as having space during the slower hours. If this was based on the number of accounts calling that server home, this would not happen without huge amounts of players constantly shifting home servers.
delicate, brick-like subtlety.
Considering ArenaNet has complete control over the caps and adjusts them every so often, dead account are likely not counted.
It’s extremely difficult to get a clear and concise answer to how they count server populations, but it seems to be how many accounts, both active and inactive, have that server selected as their home server.
CC Eva source
Community Coordinator
(Snip)
“Connor, when you see a server FULL means that the people who’ve chosen that server as theirs, or players who have moved to that particular server, have reached the cap, independently of where did they create their accounts.
(Snip)”
Which to me, translated into easier English means if you choose a server as your home server you are counted, playing or not.