Q:
Server full but no one's playing?
It’s possible, though It’s more likely the vast population is in WvW, or fractals, or just spread across the world.
Who knows?
Maguuma – [TriM][DERP]
Unfortunately, you really have no idea at ALL how many people are playing on the server. Just because you don’t see or hear many people doesn’t mean they aren’t there.
Tell your friends to try at off-peak hours (maybe like 4 a.m. or something like that).
They’ve been trying on and off all day as far as i know, still cant get in.
So are slots taken by people who does’nt activly play the game then?
I found this tidbit of info:
CC Eva
Community Coordinator
Hello everyone. edit, when you see a server FULL means that it is full from people actually playing there at the moment, independently of where did they create their accounts. For example, if a player creates an account in Vizunah Square and then moves to Baruch Bay, then all the characters of this player will go to Baruch Bay and he will be counted among the total amount of players of Baruch.
That’s about the clearest statement that Anet has given us on this issue but it still leaves a lot to be desired in regards to clarity. So everyone still has their own interpretation and opinions on the subject with it seemingly being split down the middle. I for one believe that the server limit is in relation to currently playing accounts and not the number of accounts registered to a given server. Therefore, “at the moment” would be the key phrase that I take from the above quote. But then again, I don’t have any solid proof either way and neither does anyone else for that matter.
From personal experience…if you keep trying you’ll get in soon enough. That’s about the best I can tell you.
We’ve noticed that a lot of people tend to switch servers over the weekend—jumping ship to whichever server is winning in WvWvW. We had friends who couldn’t join us on our server when they tried on a Thursday but were able to get in later in the day the next Friday due to the server-jumping. So if all else fails, see if your friends can tranfer over the weekend (as long as your server isn’t winning).
I think most servers look dead mainly because of the culling problem (whatever it is that limits the distance you can see players) The problem wasn’t in beta, but showed up soon after release and hasn’t been talked about much outside the WvW crowd.