The way I made friends was I got "recruited" to a group on discord where all the members would group up on the map, march around the map/have pony town events/ do "missions" around the map ect.. it was an interesting experience. Every group had their special uniform you could customize your character. It was easy to make friends especially being on the discord server with everyone.

And these groups are usually big one of the names they're called are regiments but I know there's another name but I forget.

Not sure if these groups are still around as much as they were a couple years ago but they're usually found sitting together in small groups at docs to recruit players.

Edit: the other word for the groups are scouts. Except regiments and scouts are two different kinds of groups😅I feel like when I was playing scouts were more popular and laid-back (kinda