The activity depends on time. If it's early morning, server is practically 100% botters, if it's around 14:00 - 22:00, server is alive. PVPs near Alexandria, Unique hunting, stalling is practically all day, but happens that it grows at that time. There are also few defects, sometimes the server randomly DCs you when you enter a town (doesn't matter if you teleport or walk in), event bot has always the same data, it never changes and you can easily remember what you have to type to win a given event (if it's about typing) - simply cheat. But that doesn't really matter, because it doesn't destroy the gameplay nor makes you fall behind in silk, as you can vote for silk (10 a day) and you also gain 2 silk every hour. One of those defects is also that you practically can't farm anything at level 101+ mobs when you hit 101, because you have set 9 DG (still can up it to +11/12 to lower your sucking at fighting those mobs), but you can set a gap at 9 and farm some money at levels 95+ (you can teleport to B3 from Jangan) or simply trade and get tons of money too (at level 7 of trader and character level 110 you can get nearly 2b from 4 trades). Money is not hard to get, the harder thing to get are novas, as they don't really drop that much and others don't sell much of them too (weapons aren't a problem here, though). Alchemy is easy, you can make your set +5 with no problem, +6 / +7 is also not that hard, so if you suffer too much while farming at mobs 101+, just get some normal level 101 equipment and set it to 5 (try +6/+7 if your item has immortal or you have multiple item of a particular type).
I'll get back to trading option; you can buy a donkey summon scroll (fastest and has the most slots) for 3 silk and do a full 5 star trade, you just get abnormal potions and heal potions for pet and run to your destination like a coward only healing your donkey and completing trades easily.
And now a question: how to get coins (all kinds)? Job temple?