About map: you are completely right, and also a bit wrong.
The resources and critters in the world map define the people that are in any square. Desert is harsh and boring, nobody go there so you dont encounter many people, wich is obviously realistic. The territory north of V13 have many molerats, and no bad critters so you can lvl up there easily, that means a lot of people killing there. Deserts around Gecko cityes are used to farm weapons from those poor ghouls, etc.
The point here is that borders betweeen places arent easily defined and most players feel the worldmap as a humongous plain rectangle instead of define it by territories. I suggest something about make worldmap more realistic in terms of travelling and farming wich is a posible solution to this problem:
http://fodev.net/forum/index.php?topic=17902.0Also keep in count that if you are in RT you will never find anybody in the wasteland
Also most PKs work in TB because is easiest to defeat lone players and imposible to flee.
If you want to maximize your posibilities of find players use the Both Modes option.
Real-life hour is important too, most players are europeans so people in America cant find many players
About farming: no you cant make the magic knightin killing because there are low posiblities of find muties in the map, also they are harsh to kill, you need at least 1 friend to defeat they, and you forgot armor lose in the progress: farm system is stable.
Yes there are places where players know what they will find, its easy if you ask in towns or go through the whole map for yourself, this might help you too:
http://fodev.net/forum/index.php?topic=4463.0ONE LAST THING (and this may dissapoint you about this postapocalyptic community): People in the wasteland are mostly cowards, if the posibilities of kill you are big they will, but if they can lose, they will ask for peace like pussyes, my advise is KILL THEM ALL, EVERYBODY DESERVE TO BURN IN HELL, and those who dont deserve that, deserve to die aswell because they ignorancy.