One very important thing to understand: the forums DO NOT represent the server. The people who frequent the forums are a small subset of the overall P99 population, and it tends to be a very ... critical subset (to put it politely). So please, take anything you read here with many grains of salt.
All that being said, I think the server has a population consistent with live servers (although everyone's memory of live is of course different). Certainly places like Karnor's Castle where the less adventurous tend to gather are busy, but if you look around there are plenty of other places even at the highest levels. For instance, I was in Charasis (great very high-end dungeon) last Saturday morning and there were only two other people in the zone (and even at peak times people get groups there).
So I'd say come join us, make a character and I'm pretty sure you'll be hooked with just a few hours of that EverCrack. Whatever faults the high-end has, it wouldn't be full of people if it wasn't fun on some level.
P.S. As mentioned the raid scene has its ... faults. But again, it's not as bad as the forums make it sound. While it's true the fanatic players grab the most popular raid targets as soon as they spawn, they certainly do not monopolize all raid content, and plenty of guilds with members who have lives raid (just not the best stuff).
If you're coming here to kill the Sleeper yourself or do other top tier raid content, and you have a job/life, this may not be the server for you (also the Sleeper is already dead). But if you've come to play EQ and not raid, or raid but not the very top stuff, or raid the top stuff and you have no job/life, you'll be fine.
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