One way to avoid the starter area situation is to spread the player base out, have each race have their own areas. Too many MMOs these days just have 1 linear set of zones, so 1 starter zone, which everything bundles into. Although MMO popularity has increased I'm not sure (without seeing some figures) if the same is true of the actual simultaneous capacity of MMOs, for example, Daoc used to have around 4000 players logged in at a time on a server, back in 2003. I might be wrong, but I think that many MMOs since then have had similar numbers that are logged into a server at a time (many more servers, but similar numbers logged in per server). The difference is that a lot of newer MMOs make things so linear, say 1 or 2 starting areas and then a linear progression where you go from zone x at level 10, to zone y at level 15, then zone z at level 20. In effect, pushing everyone along the same route at the same times, causing congestion.
Zoneless open world MMOs avoid this issue somewhat (ie UO), by having a gameworld where people can go anywhere at anytime, thus spreading out the player base. Another way of course, as I say, is to design a game with far more areas, larger worlds, with differing choices for levelling in zones (ie. Daoc, where each race had different starting areas, thereby spreading the initial rush of players around rather than cramming them all into one starting area)
