I just wanna ask if many people are still playing this and is it worth to invest time in.

Imo the game never truly received the attention it deserved, primarily due to poor advertisement, unnecessary namechange and changes in the payment system.

I'm not sure how well the servers are populated right now.

Terrible terribad, almost as bad as funcom management, and customer service. Just skip this game.

Customer service answered two of my tickets in two days (one each day).  And the issue was my fault ( I had lost a promo code) so, from my personal and recent experience, this game's support staff and customer service is Excellant.

well, they knowingly broke the game for vista 64 users. they did it knowing it'll break it for us, and still went ahead and patched it in, that's quality service there.

Customer server largely depends on how much you spend at the cash shop.  Spend enough, and you can get get waited on hand and foot by CS and break all the games rules without penalty.

And honestly, to answer the OP's original question, no. Though it depends on what you are after.

Not that many people play the game, and most of the people online at any given money are AFK.  So it's not really a MMO sort of game. Even after joining a clan (two different ones) I had no one to talk to or do quests or raids with, since everyone was AFKing all day.   That's not a big problem until the endgame, when you likely won't have good enough equipment to do anything (unless you spend a ton of the money in the cash shop).

OTOH, if you are a casual sort of player that doesn't like playing games often, but having your characters level up on their own while you are AFK, then it 's probably worth trying. (Indeed, later on this year, players get their own personal bots - pets, which will collect drops for you while you AFK, as long as they are fed cash shop items)

And if you have a lot of money, since a lot of things in the game are buyable, like characters and the best gear, you can be good just by using your credit card.

edit

here's an example of their great customer service

http://forum.swordofthenewworld.com/index.php?showtopic=23868

A person wants to buy gold, but can't because their sword and G1 accounts aren't linked. But he can't get customer service to help him, because he's not a cash shop user and they don't help free players. Even though he wants to be a cash shop user.

Finally a K2 employee locked the thread.

The Customer Service does help free players but only after the Premium Players (who have used the cash shop in the last 15 days) have been dealt with. There is an exception whereby all players are dealt with equally. I think it's if a player can't access the game at all but I'm not sure.

I think you were just unfortunate with the clans you were in Jeremy although I do agree that a vast majority of the server is AFK at any given time. The amount of attention you recieve from clanmates generally depends on the size of the clan.

I think there are lots of people playing. There’s usually someone around to help out (or run over to) when your party gets mobbed. People talk. After only 4 weeks of play I have 14 people on my friends list, I’m part of a squad that is all over the place; the clan I’ve joined has 87 members and the clan chat is constant.  People posting here will have had different experiences so you really have to try it.

I played to LV 30 on saw about 30 other ppl who where AFK.

Only ppl I saw actually playing where on towns and too busy to chat.

Then I quit, it's just not good enough of a game to take it as a 1 player game.