When I started, I picked Triumph (Yep, another Triumphateer? Triumphverate? Triumphian?), I picked it, not because it was the top of the list...
I picked it because I could remember it: Triumph, for the Insult Dog Comic.
One of the weird little pieces of inside ball was the fact that sometimes in public discussion people on Triumph would claim that Triumph was known as the "insult comic server" and then giggle to themselves, because that was emphatically *not* what the server was generally known as on the actual server (pantsless beat that by about thirty to one, because of an inside joke that probably no one even remembers). We also sometimes called the server the "friendly" server, and then as now "friendly" was always in quotes. We were in fact generally very friendly to newcomers, but often like the friend you throw in the back seat by themselves on long car rides.
Everyone is probably biased towards their own server(s), but I think I lucked out on Triumph for one simple reason: Triumph had a higher proportion of veteran players
that actually wanted to be there. Triumph was a lower population server although higher than Liberty and Protector, say, but still significantly lower than Infinity and Guardian, much less Freedom and Virtue. Its interesting to note that when Hamidon strategies were being formulated, while Freedom was generally in the lead to take down level 50 Hamidon, Champion and Triumph were always close behind. The lower population servers seemed to attract more relaxed players, and Triumph seemed to have a higher density of veteran skilled but lax players. That meant all other things being equal, Triumph was more tolerant of, shall we say, unoptimized gameplay. If you decided to start running ahead of the team and Nova blasting the next spawn, you were less likely to be admonished and more likely to start a tier 9 contest among the blasters. As long as you didn't actually hurt the team or kill anyone, all was fair. And in fact if you were on a team that actually
knew you on at least some level, then even killing yourself or others was acceptable if it was funny enough.
Which is not to say that every server didn't have such people. But I think its fair to say if you were on a random Pug on Freedom and decided to do something goofy, you were statistically more likely to draw ire than on Triumph.
I just wish they'd stay away from those goddamn bombs...