There is only 1 real good cruise server and that is [LTC] its the biggest and most successful and there is nothing you can do to change it no matter how many cruise servers are released LTC still wins.
I don't race 24/7 (as you can tell by my stats, which show i haven't raced properly in about a year), I have met plenty of friends (i.e. UKCT) thanks to racing, and am naturally competitive (thats why it's a RACING sim that made me want to download it in the first place...)
My god there's like 80 cruise servers, Yes i go on some sometime but mostly i like to race now, and now there's not enough race servers to join because everyone is at either cruise or drift. I just went online, there was not one TBO server. There was about 15 cruise servers 30 drift servers and 20 demo servers. i saw maybe 3 or 4 race servers that were occupied by maybe 4 or 5 people. god man.
There are a couple of good servers online, which are very nice to drive on
Plus you don't have to go through all of the XRG/XFG racing. Even if CTRA1 was a great servers, it was really hard for beginners to upgrade their license points because of the 6-7 platinum drivers that were there all the time.