I've noticed that too. But I just chalk it up to Bungie's "minimum multi-player online" design.

I've been seeing quite a lot of people on PS4, but my friend on PS3 has said it feels a bit sparse before about 6pm (BST)

Interestingly he says the PS3 is awash with Hunters, where I feel like I've hardly seen any.

My world started out sparse last night... but I ascribe that to having a really bad connection to Live due to flooding. As the cables dried out (I guess) I started to see more people.

-- Steve takes the good with the bad in always-online titles.

I've not played much so far (I'm a lowly level 6), but when I have played, I find the world to be very sparsely populated. Is this a product of being on last gen? Being on PST? Playing late at night? Even the tower is empty: last night I was the only one there for quite a while!

This has always been my fear: that having four different versions would fragment the community and player experience.

Is this typical of what everyone else is experiencing?

If it had to do with you timing and console, that would imply that you were the ONLY one playing on 360/PS3, which I highly doubt. My guess is that it's a combination of Bungie's servers not aggressively placing people together, or that your ping was bad enough that Bungie's servers decided you needed to play in your own world lest things get jumpy for all players.

I suspect Bungie will fine tune the server algorithms and player placement as time goes on.

I had teh same when I played on Tuesday. Max of 3 other people in the Tower, usually just 1 or 2. Yesterday though, it was like the Beta again. My guess would be just Launch issues and it will improve. Can't say for sure though.