How is SSO going nowadays?

Hey everyone! Im new to this subreddit, but I played SSO a lot during my childhood. The thing is, my parents weren’t very well-off and didn’t want to spend a 60 € on a lifetime VIP membership. So whenever my monthly subscriptions expired, they would sometimes renew them and sometimes not. As I grew older, I eventually stopped playing.

Now that Im a student and finally have my own money, I feel like fulfilling my younger selfrs dream of becoming a lifetime Star Rider! Im planning to buy it either next month or the one after, and by the end of the university year, I’d love to spend my holidays on SSO.

Even though Im mainly doing this for fun and to experience the storyline, Ird like to know if SSO is still fairly active. Im French, so if anyone from France could share their experience, that would be great! And for other European players, are the servers still as lively as they used to be? I donrt necessarily need a huge crowd, but I used to love joining clubs, competitions, and making new friends, so I‘d love to know if that is still possible.

Also, does anyone know if using a VPN allows you to switch to a foreign server? If the French servers are quiet, I was thinking of trying the UK, US, or even German servers, since I speak German as well.

I precise that I will mostly lay SSO for the quests, to buy horses and archieve different levels mainly, but if socialisation is still possible, I’d like to know!