Well seeing that I have homes on many shards I think I can answer this....
Origin's population is not Bank sitters, we tend to be active and yes virginia we have a good amount of people still.
Oceania - To be frank if you go on during normal USA hours you might find 1 or 3 people, this includes me int hat #, but if you go on at server time Sidney then the locals come out.
This goes for any Asia shard. They are just getting up when we are going to bed.
Lake Austin - Has a working population, few luna sitters but is not too bad. This is also the case for Baja, Sonoma, Catskills.
Chessy - this shard fluxs in populaion showing up, once the darling of the East coast group has its moments of dead air. IE: few in luna but I can say I run into alot of people out doing things. But far from empty!
GL & LS - same as most of the median population shards, But one must remember again not all sit in Luna some do sit in Brit bank still.
Siege - sorry Kemo, the population of this shard is on its last legs. I own 3 homes there and love it but..... there is not a working population like we had before the Ea gang decided to change to the 1 house per account ruleset. Im sorry you need a house ..even a small cracker box to run to. I have watched the shard go from friendly pvping to mass all out kill kill kill andbe damned, its only saving grace was the players set up a newbie guild so a new player could get use to the pace of the reds. I love Siege to death but I have to be honest it was wrong to insist it was made for pvp/pkers. It was for testing a veteran players metal to build up in the hard world of Siege Perilous. We had guilds and wars and friends, oh the occasional red would kill you but not like it was the last few years.
Europa and Drac - Again the hours of the population is in europe and time zoneing is the key to finding people on shard As Petra can atest to.
Of the Asian shards Balhea is bad, I use to own 3 castles there was a good shard dont know what happened but its not the same anymore. Hokuto and many other Asian shards are super busy! You can barely squeeze even in fel a small house!
Atlantic - Well there is things to be said for and against this shard, it does have the master population skimmed off every shard out there. Kemo if you want to know where your people went its here. I still see books recruting from all the shards to go there for the best pvp. I can even tell you a great many on there owned castles on Origin and transfered back and forth to Atl most have stoped and just moved there perma. On Origin they would do champs and make gold to support the moves for the pvp on Atl.
Legends - has lost a great deal of its population but I deleted 99.9 % of my chars to the shard so not much on up to the minute population #'s but From players I know on Catskills who also have on this shard say its bad.
In the long run I think its best to say there are many shards suffering from low attendance and could use an influx of players.
My son came up with a idea of how to cut back on shards if it need be done. I have to admit its a good one.
His proposal is stop all char production, house placement, give a tolken of house replacement(this would give you free placement of a house of equil or lesser size on the shard of your choice in malas, tokuno, tram or fel
Note: the Malas placement of Castles an Keeps would be allowed by the tolkens only
Each char would be given a transfer tolken to use set to their name only, this way it would be not sellable if not used static to that char only.
Grandfathered account home owners would be granted the ability to move placing that account in temp state of house placement for the period of 1 week after the shard has disapeared from the log in. This would allow them to place just the same amount of houses they had on that shard only, no aditional house other then the same as were being lost. A special moving crate to pack up to the full limit of their house, bank, and animals.
its an idea. But I would hope we never get to that point.... Id need a char menu super long. 7 char slots would not be enough for my crew!!!
