Def your pc thing. For example, I currently have a rather crappy PC, but I have set everything on 1, except Character View Distance at 5. It should mean characters loading away, but sometimes it's loading so slow that I'm already gripping the character but still don't see him.
So it's something about your settings/performance. For me, it's because of lack of RAM (4gb, nearing top with BNS on) and game being installed on HDD.