I’m mostly playing single player/coop mode or on my friend’s modded server. Whenever I login to the server I see all these official servers that are virtually empty. It seems such a waste. But maybe there is a way to get more player to official servers if Funcom started offering servers with the most popular mods in the Workshop. Why don’t you do a survey, Funcom, see what kind of interest there is in official modded servers. Ask the players which mods they would like best and pick from those.
Who knows, interest in the game might get a new boost from something like this, but I’m no expert and this is something for Funcom’s marketing department to decide.
Everyone who wants to play modded servers, play on modded servers.
Also G-Portal servers (which officials are) do VERY POORLY with mods. They don’t update properly, they have a MUCH higher chance of workshop download corruption. And their performance tanks.
There is two ways to improve official populations. First to select another server host. Better performance will bring some back and keep them from bleeding players. And then to cut out like 75% of the servers.
Why have 1000 servers with less than half a dozen each, when you can have 200ish servers with 10-20 each on average? That also will draw more players. One thing that has been proven on officials and private is numbers attract numbers. Some servers will be capped, some will have medium occupancy, and others will have lower numbers, everyone will get the type of population they want still with those numbers.
Mods solve a lot of problems. But this topic isn’t one of them.