It all depends on the number of people online at the time. NPCs need server power to create and run, so when the server fills, the npc spawns drop until when you've got about 190 players where they stop entirely.
You could always do missions if you want to kill NPC when the server is too full. Missions help your rep anyway. Although, there are times I'd like to park a character in the Colorado Silver Field and farm Xeno NPC like the good old days.
Yeah I noticed this today while moving through Rheinland...you always ave LWB at the Stutgart JG in New berlin and then either LWB or Unioners on the other side...I moved completely through Hamburg, New Berlin, and Stutgart with out seeing one NPC. I finally saw some Sair NPC's in Omega 7. Seems the house space looses them first, since there were still Nomads in Kappa and the usual about Freeport 9
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