macskull

You keep using those words. I do not think they mean what you think they mean.

Huh.

I mean sure, if you're counting NPCs in the zone totals I guess BB and Warburg are populated...

Playing City of Heroes would be a good first start, as just about every Blaster you'll see in Freedom RV (the only active PvP zone across all servers) is Psi/EM.

This. Have fun!

For a short while after I9 was released Hurdle and Swift allowed enhancement sets, which meant people could slot stealth IOs in those powers. Of course, people realized that interfered with hostage missions, so the ability to slot sets was removed but those characters who had stealth IOs in those powers were not forced to respec. Basically they're grandfathered in - if a character with such slotting were to respec, they wouldn't be able to slot that IO in that power anymore, but as long as they don't respec it will function.

It's worth noting that many (perhaps most) Oceanic players gravitate toward a single server (Justice), so that server can be busier than others depending on the time of night. I was quite surprised to see Justice at the bottom of BZB's list earlier, because it usually bounces around from third to sixth place in terms of population. In terms of population, I noticed Virtue has been on even footing with (and sometimes higher than) Freedom since I16's launch. I'm guessing that has something to do with 1) power customization allowing more roleplay freedom and perhaps bringing some older players back for a while, and 2) people moving off Freedom to the next-highest-population server during free transfers earlier this year. I should note, however, that those observations are based off the "bulbs" at server selection and we don't know whether Virtue has received the same hardware upgrades that Freedom's been getting over the last few years.

I tend to remain hidden from searches, especially on PvP characters, mostly because I want to avoid invites to teams that aren't being formed by someone I know (or that I didn't form myself). When it's a player I know I'll get in touch with them through a global channel or other means, and if it's a PuG I'd prefer to form it myself (both to stack the team with buff/debuff and at least try to pick semi-intelligent players based on the limited information I have available), mostly to avoid PuG hell. Yes, I'm aware hiding from searches makes me essentially invisible to most players, and that's the way I want it - I get rid of blind invites, I more or less get rid of PuG hell, and I can play on my terms instead of someone else's.

There seems to be a rift between those who claim servers are dead and those who say they're healthy: global channels can make or break the play experience. Let's say I'm a new player. I make characters on a few different servers just to check the place out. My first character zones into Mercy and doesn't see anyone else at or near the starting point. There's no chatter in broadcast, and when I pull up the search window I see two other people. I play around a bit, get bored, and make a new character. This time I zone into Mercy and there are five or six people standing by Kalinda, there's light chatter in broadcast (both looking for and forming teams), and search shows twenty people in the zone. As a new player I'm much more likely to go with the second server because it'll get me off to a much quicker start. Global channels mean I don't have to worry about what I see only in my zone, because I can find out what's going on at any level range, on either side, even if I'm on a completely different server. However, the new player has to know what channels to join (and how to use those channels), and many times different player groups will use different channels - for example, Justice's main global channel might be pretty quiet during peak Oceanic hours, while the main Oceanic channel might have much higher activity. It's a matter both of perception and education, really, neither of which a new player is going to have (and a vast majority of new players won't even think to go to the forums to find out information, so they'll be relying on people in broadcast - if there are any - to provide them with hints and tips to get moving).

EDIT: As a sidenote, I have characters on Freedom, Virtue, Infinity, Justice, Liberty, Protector, and Pinnacle, so I can honestly say I've run the gamut when it comes to high-population and low-population servers. I'm originally from Justice, and I wouldn't have known much about that server or the game in general if I hadn't started playing with several out-of-game friends (all of whom have moved on to WoW or quit gaming in general, unfortunately). I made a fairly large move to Freedom shortly after I13 and again with free transfers because that's where the PvP population was consolidating. I regularly play a few alts on Virtue and sometimes Infinity, though my Liberty, Protector, and Pinnacle characters have fallen out of favor due to lower populations. It's also worth noting that I've maxed my 10 global channels - those which I belong to operate largely out of Justice (5 of 10), some from Freedom (3 of 10), one cross-server, and one from Infinity, so part of the "emptiness" of Liberty, Protector, and Pinnacle comes from not being able to join global channels from those servers.

Wrong, wrong, wrong, and more wrong.

This is why you skip it.

lol, no

Don't even need to herd too much with that map. I threw up a recording of a run with my SS/Fire/Mu, and you can see that Burn has at least some utility here (it's also worth noting that Nemesis like to lock themselves into really long animations, which is nice when they're standing right next to you in a Burn patch).