I was just wondering which shard should i transfer too? Im on Chessapeake, and im quite bored with it. Any idea?

Atlantic, Pacific, Europa.

I suppose this is common knowledge?

How can you tell which shards are more populated?

I don't know how to find the UO Shard stats but Europa always has people around, I play mostly in the day time rather than evenings and I normally find people when I need something and often get involved with different groups , certanly by early evening the bank is rocking and things get busy still.

If you do decide to go on to Europs give me a shout (via ICQ is easiest on my forum profile) and I'll show you around the place.

good luck

The best measuring stick for population and activity is shard completion time for game wide events. The candle of love event, being the most recent, is a good indicator. Atlantic, Pacific, and Europa all finished really quickly, while many others lagged behind.

When you log in, you can sort the shards by population at that time. Since common experience has it that the prime play time is 4 to 8 pm, server time, that is the best time to check each.

I would think it is great lakes, atleast from seeing bank actibity. Europa is just filled with afk macroers, if not for my lag on US servers I would have moved there instead.

Thom, I kinda disagree with this. For example, with the candle of love event, I think MANY folks were far too interested in farming alacrity scroll to see it end. I think you may have had more RP guilds/folks that are more into the "events" that perhaps pursued the end game of those events. It's just another thought, but I think there is validity to it. As far as busy shards, I will grant Atlantic and Europa as VERY active, but in my visits to Pacific I have found it quite dead compared to GL, for example. I would "think" that Chessy and Cats might be busier as well. This is from checking out WBB, Luna and a few dungeons. FWIW.

Pac or GL!

I play on the Atlantic shard and there is always people around doing peerless and doom runs. Also, according to uo.com, Atlantic is home to the two largest guilds in Ultima Online.