Sever population

I was just wondering if there was a reason why Freedom and Virtue (I think nobody's on right now so I can't see which 2 get the yellow dots) have so many people on them? Is it just a coincidence? I mean I could see people back in the day making a hero and picking Freedom as their server because it sounds heroic or something. It's just been making me wonder if there's like some weird party going on in Freedom all the time. Maybe it's a trap and you can't get out...

For one reason or another new players have a tendency to start their characters on the servers with the most population so it becomes a positive feedback loop. Also their reputation of Freedom as the unofficial PVP server and Virtue as the unofficial RP server may contribute to their popularity.

Also those indicators are load and not population but they do tend to go hand in hand.

Also, Freedom was the beta server, I believe. And/or it was the server that players in the beta were allowed to reserve names on. So it got a population jump start ahead of the other servers.

Also in the beginning didn't the most populated servers automatically list at the top of the server list?

I believe so. Now it is listed from the last server you were logged in on and goes from lowest to highest.

I think it used to be the other way around.

Indeed. The listing order was reversed. (Most recent remains at the top.) There was no official statement about the reason, but I believe it was to use human nature (new players picking the first server listed) to even out the populations.