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But it does get a little annoying to see my home server constantly attacked, belittled, insulted, etc whenever someone asks a question about servers....
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Actually, it's a good plan. If they get people to go to other servers, it makes the population spread more uniform. It's like the server listing. It used to have the busiest one at the top (after the one you were just on) and new people would often just pick the first one. Now they have the least busy at the top.
Paragon City Search And Rescue
The Mentor Project
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Now they have the least busy at the top.
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IIRC... The last server you visited is at the top, then followed by lowest to highest population.
Okay, no such thing as "best" server.
If you're looking for highest population server, that's Freedom. Hands down.
There IS a downside to this though.
Freedom and Virtue are the two highest population servers. HOWEVER, during events (like Double XP weekend, which is coming up next weekend), getting into those two servers is nigh-on IMPOSSIBLE. And, while you're on, it's a hellacious lag-fest due to various zones being full, sometimes several times over. With the advent of AE, I'm willing to bet, were you able to get on, 4-6 instances of Atlas Park running.
My advice? Start an alt on one of the lower-pop servers and work him a bit. Then park him until you feel like playing again. Like the NEXT double-XP weekend.
Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.
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And why not point out other "facts" like in general only low end machines will really notice the lag
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No. Sorry. Lag is only PARTIALLY a function of your machine's ability to cope with the rendering load.
I can crank my resolution down to 1024x768 and lower the graphical settings to "butt ugly basic" on my GTX260, hop onto Freedom in AP1 and STILL experience fits and starts. This is with a quad core 2.5Ghz machine, 8 Gigs of RAM, with nothing but Windows, the Task Manager watching CPU load, and CoH running.
CPU load on NONE of the cores climbs above 50%, memory utilization pops at about 1.5GB.
AND I STILL GET LAG.
I can do the same thing on the lower pop servers and never get a frame twitch on me. Heck, I can turn my SQL server back on and it doesn't affect me.
Zone population, regardless of machine power, still has an effect on the zone's performance.
Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.
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Infinity the Sexy Server 
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I approve this message!
Well not much more I can input that hasn't been said. I'll suggest you do like I did before I decided.
-Choose your normal playtime and do a /netgraph on the highest to lowest pop server to see what kind of ping times you get.
-Park a toon in Atlas and PI and just monitor Broadcast to see what kind of requests/chats are going on and also look at the player activity.
-Do a Channel search with the Server's name you're on and monitor their badge/TF chat.
I went thru them all before I settled.
As a side note - I tend (in a longer, "Here's how you create a new group so this doesn't bother you again" cut and paste, to mention making alts on another server. I'd suggest doing it anyway - every once in a while, one data center will have issues, or you'll have a network problem (outside of NC's purview) that keeps you from seeing one "coast" of servers.
Champion
Guardian
Justice
Protector
Virtue
... are all west coast servers, all the others are on the east coast. Make alts on each coast. 
(There's frankly no performance difference. Living in Oregon, I was playing on Pinnacle and saw no difference from one of the above. Living in FL... still no difference.)
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HOWEVER, during events (like Double XP weekend, which is coming up next weekend), getting into those two servers is nigh-on IMPOSSIBLE.
[/ QUOTE ] That is just flat out not the truth.
OP: While they do fill up, getting on Freedom and Virtue during double XP weekend is only impossible if the user is brain dead..
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HOWEVER, during events (like Double XP weekend, which is coming up next weekend), getting into those two servers is nigh-on IMPOSSIBLE.
[/ QUOTE ] That is just flat out not the truth.
OP: While they do fill up, getting on Freedom and Virtue during double XP weekend is only impossible if the user is brain dead..
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Never taken me long at all, popping into one of the non-grey server's character select screens then back out to get a it to open back up.
Not only are people logging in and playing all the time on DXP on Freedom, but people are logging out for RL reasons too.
Orc&Pie No.53230 There is an orc, and somehow, he got a pie. And you are hungry.
www.repeat-offenders.net
Negaduck: I see you found the crumb. I knew you'd never notice the huge flag.
Okay, I will amend it to "extremely difficult" if you want to get on and play in an immediate fashion.
Better?
Spending an hour going *CLICK* "Have I connected? isn't much in the way of entertainment value to me.
And using in-game tricks to just flat out STAY connected throughout...I'll just leave this unsaid.
Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.
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Spending an hour going *CLICK*
[/ QUOTE ] *cough* B.S. *cough*
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Spending an hour going *CLICK*
[/ QUOTE ] *cough* B.S. *cough*
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Not entirely. It depends on what type of effort they make when trying to log on.
During the last 2xp weekend the longest time it took me to get onto Freedom was 3 minutes. HOWEVER . . . I sat at my computer and patiently logged in and backed out over and over until I got online.
If people aren't willing to take the time to make the effort it requires to log on then it may very well take them an hour to log on.
I know exactly what many of them are doing. They try to log on and can't, try two or three more times, then give up for 10 minutes and try again, give up and try again 5-10 minutes later, give up and try again in another 10 minutes, etc. etc. etc. Before they know it an hour and a half has passed and they blame the devs.
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And using in-game tricks to just flat out STAY connected throughout...I'll just leave this unsaid.
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Hey, if I wanna spend my 2xp weekend logged onto Freedom, and stand in my base using the base editor to tear my base down to the foundations and rebuild it that's my right. I'm not breaking any rules.
Nonono Forbin. I'm not talking about people who are in and legitimately USING the game, getting XP or not. I'm talking about the type of nether orifice that logs in, plays a while then picks up an AE mission or TF and goes and parks without logout.
Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.
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Nonono Forbin. I'm not talking about people who are in and legitimately USING the game, getting XP or not. I'm talking about the type of nether orifice that logs in, plays a while then picks up an AE mission or TF and goes and parks without logout.
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Last 2xp weekend someone started chewing me out when I told him I was busy on my base. Said I was making it harder for the legitimate players to play. So I threw him on ignore and rebuilt my base from the ground up.
Now I admit that because he irritated me I logged onto my second account as well and then would run that character thru a mission, then used the prestige earned on the second account to rebuild my base on the first account. That probably caused my base building to take 3 times as long as it normally would have had the jerk kept his mouth shut.
I also kept toggling to the forums to participate in the whinefest going on there. The guy that tried arguing that the way to solve Freedoms overpopulation was to merge the servers was priceless.
I play on Freedom because of the population. I'll admit Freedom is full of chat spam and some stupid people, but frankly it's better than a ghost town.
A few days ago I decided to try a new server. I'm pretty sure I tried Guardian, Triumph, and Pinnacle. When I zoned in, Atlas was empty. I did a search for lowbies to maybe get a sewer team together. I did a search for 1-10 people. There were about 8 people online altogether in that category. I decided to go to Virtue and was happy there. So now my main servers are Freedom and Virtue.
I can't stand playing this game alone, and that's what it feels like I'm doing on the ghost town servers.
Your answer: Freedom & Virtue, most populated servers. They are the only servers to have 2 dots more often. Of the 2 Freedom is the highest.
You will find far less Villains then heroes on any server. Usually about 1/2 the population. Some buck this trend from time to time but its fairly consistent.
You will find great people, idiots, and everything between on any server. The larger the group the greater the chance of running into any one of those said members.
As you can read in this thread you will also come across sever loyalty/devotion. Some people like Coke, some people like Pepsi. That is just how it is.
Try each Freedom first, Virtue second, and like other have already suggested make an alt or 2 on other server for times when you can't get on.
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I play on Freedom because of the population. I'll admit Freedom is full of chat spam and some stupid people, but frankly it's better than a ghost town.
[/ QUOTE ] That is the reason I moved to Freedom a couple years ago too. But since then I've started to be a mainly solo player, only really teaming when doing a task force or playing with my roommate. I would move to a different server, but my roommate and I have a really nice base. I took several hundred hours and a double prestige grant to get it that way(we didn't fill up our SG all the way when the prestige grant happened). I don't really feel like putting in that kind of effort. But I have made a couple characters on Pinnacle just in case Freedom is worse than ever this double XP.
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Hey. I played this game about 1.5 years ago for a while and quit. Now I am thinking of returning but I am looking for a server with the highest population, where there are at least people on all the time. Thanks in advance!
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First off.. Welcome back to the game...
You'll get arguements going back and forth about the servers.. yes, Freedom is the most populated, which answers the question you asked.
As you can tell by my signature... I'm highly tied to Liberty, but venture out time to time and don't see much difference on the lower populated servers (I can't prove it... but I have experienced it)... and yes, when I have ventured to Freedom during events. I quickly and fondly recall why I play on a less populated server...
If you want to roll a toon over here on Liberty... There's lots of great people here... As a suggestion, I would suggest heading to the SERVER section of the forums and read through whatever is of interest to you and then go from there.
Again, welcome back and we hope you have a GREAT times, whereever you call 'home'