May be interested in giving this game a shot, but didn't want to ge tinto another MMO where I end up cruising around and seeing maybe 2 people over a period of a few hours.

How is the population?

I stopped playing when they merged the free trial isle and the premium servers, at which point-and-time, there were over 500 users online at almost any given point. This has surely dropped since the hype of that changeover, but most likely still over 300, if not more from recent exposure and word of mouth.

As for not seeing anyone, it depends on where you are, and what server-type.

Starting out in the PvE server puts you close to tons of people, as they all moved in right where they popped out. The further you go, the less people you are going to see, but there is a global chat to help with that.

The PvP server can get lonely depending on what side you are. The Jenn-Kellon kingdom has the most players and it's capital is packed. The other two kingdoms ain't doing too good, but they are tight-knit (scratch that for blacklighters).

There were over 900 concurrent users on last night, which is the highest I've seen it so the population is currently growing.  Granted, for most mmorpg's this doesn't sound like many but it is good for Wurm and the reason that a new pve server was opened as the previous one had begun to get crowded.

For most folk in Wurm they find a spot and settle down, it's not like a regular quest based MMORPG where you travel from zone to zone and often find that the lower level ones are deserted as there are no quests.  If you want to meet lots of folks then you can join an active village or build one yourself near the busiest areas of the map (usually the new player spawn/player market area).

Whether you are playing to meet lots of players or playing to be a hermit the choice is yours in Wurm.

Im playing it. Graphics are pretty bad, but its a pretty decent sandbox. A bit grindy in places, but very immersive.