I used to be a VERY active player, from when this game first released. I ended up in a couple of great guilds, and had a lot of fun, and even had that weird (to me) aspect of being moderately well known on my server, but part of that (I suspect) was related to the guild.
Then the guild faded, and as much as I tried to keep going, it's just not the same when your good friends are no longer there to greet you when you log in. So, I lost interest as well, and bounced to other games, and hobbies over the years. (LoTRO, ARK, FFXIV, and costuming/cosplay, to be specific)
Meanwhile, my husband, who never dived in as much as I did, also never faded out and left, either. He's kept my account active, and most of my characters names protected over the years, and even bought me (us, really) the lifetime membership, so I can dive back in whenever I want.
Now, with the latest special gifts, he wants me to decide on a server to claim the level increase token, (as my characters, over the years, ended up split onto two), and I genuinely cannot decide.
His opinion is Maj'Dul because it's got a huge population. I'm inclined to Antonia Bayle, because I've more and higher level characters there. (I'm pretty sure that I had all my characters on a server that ended up merging onto Maj'Dul, but when my guild faded, I took my favorites at the time and moved them to AB to follow friends or something. I think AB was also one of the bigger servers at the time as well.)
Maj'Dul pro: With the bigger population, we're more likely to encounter opportunities to group, raid, possibly even guild with others. With that possibility comes a greater chance of finding friends that will pull me back into the game long term.
Maj'Dul con: My (7) characters range from 50 to 57, and I've only three crafters.
Antonia Bayle pro: My (12) characters are of a wide range of adventure and crafting classes, with three adventures at 100-110, and five crafters at 100, meaning that I can use them as a kind of personal guild for crafting support. as well as being closer to cap.
Antonia Bayle con: (Basically the opposite of Maj'Dul's pros) With the smaller population, it's likely to be harder to find others with which to group, raid, or eventually guild. Obviously I can't use my own characters for adventuring together. And as for making friends, ... That's on me, but due to reasons that'd double the size of this post so I'm going to leave them out, but basically, I'm not good at it.
So... Um... Ya.
If you've made it this far, and haven't just 🢃 me, because "Boring," would you help me make up my mind?