the waterson server pop is absurd

Agreed. Of course there are workarounds, but the existence of a minor roadblock would only help solve the problem.

the issue is that roadblock was there before. They knew this was a problem. I can't imagine who thought it would be a good idea to remove this function. The only reason I can think of is that they thought people would join the underpopulated faction instead of hopping on whoever's rolling the biggest zerg and rack up points with the rest of them. The problem here is that they didn't give any incentive to do anything but further imbalance the server.

maybe it was an issue with the server merges and having characters on opposing factions on one server as a direct result of a merge, but you could just let them transfer one to another server.

I'm a Vanu on the Waterson Server.
I remember 1 Time when I was in a platoon with my Outfit, we were defending a Bio Lab.
It felt like... The entire TR Force came to this Bio Lab...
Hundreds... And they kept on coming...
Y-YOU DON'T KNOW MAN YOU WEREN'T THERE!
In the end we managed to defend the bio lab, But It was the biggest Bio Lab battle I've been in.
The Waterson Population is absurd, SOE Needs to find a way to solve this problem, I don't know how to solve this problem, but SOE's job is to solve these problems.

Nice Necro.

Well, we're in the same situation we were before the previous WG rotation, VS 2x% TR 40% NC 3x%, so a necro might be appropiate right now, I don't complain though, I've been getting my highest session K/Ds since this last update, which means, moar freekill 4th factioners to farm

Yea, it's a free to play game, there's no avoiding 4th factioning. All SOE could do is make it more tedious to do it, but it's doubtful if that would change the end result.

I kinda like fighting while outnumbered. Good certs that outstrip the points given by winning the alert. Winning territory against a pop advantage is also more rewarding than simple zerging.

Can't really do much about it atm, those 4th factioners love their north warpgate . . . and Terran tactical superiority.

aka zerging

*Terran Announcer Voice* Now that's what we call Numerical Superiority!

Past prime time it's funny to watch the population of any base the TR is attacking or defending go from attacker/defender pop advantage to 3-4x TR pop advantage in a few minutes. It's like a giant red meatball that rolls from base to base, when it arrives at the base you are at you simply farm a few free kills then move to where the meatball isn't at the moment, as most other bases are usually lightly defended.

The play style past primetime is really boring as it seems each side runs around steam rolling lightly defended bases avoiding fighting each other as much as possible, and once an alert starts just watch the server population swing massively in the TR's favor. Capping empty bases is boring as all hell, I don't know how those folks do it every night. At this point I've pretty much stopped playing on Waterson outside primetime, as I either go to another server or go and play a different game altogether. Until SOE figures out that they need to handicap alert XP gains for the massively overpop faction to control the 4th factioners, this game will suffer badly outside primetime.

I have changed my stance on this topic to a certain extent. Off peak population has become a concern. Especially on Waterson (because I play there) because it has become so dramatic. 30% is too much at any time. We could really use a smarter recommended server start algorithms based on some kind of weighted hourly averages.

You shoot people in the warpgate

This is late night early morning pop numbers. it is usually 40% TR until around 4 hours before primetime. It then gets around 37% TR and 35-33% NC with VS usually pulling 27-32% at the most.