I think that the majority of low pop servers should be forced to consolidate. Offer free -entire- transfers from one server to a select group of "not bad, but not full" servers.

Lots of people are reluctant to transfer if that means they lose their bank alt and all the other characters they're working on. Most people are unwilling to spend $200+ pushing alts to a new server, especially if they're not necessarily sure the new server is good or they can't convince their friends to throw down real cash moving their character and alt(s). I'd assume these people who are that dissatisfied with their server, are more likely to quit the game and try something different with less servers and a more consolidated population, than they would be to throw more money at WoW, where in their eyes it's your own fault for rolling on a graveyard of a server that people can't wait to leave.

Combining low pop realms, bad idea. Dispersing the population to other realms (and not just 5 crap realms, give people a full spectrum of choice and even allow PVE -> PVP transfers, which seems to be the biggest reason people restart on a new server anyway) is a good idea that makes sense. Guilds can stay together even if they're only 10 people. Friends can go play on the same server. Again, people may be reluctant to leave if their buddy can't afford to transfer or just doesn't feel like rerolling or transferring at all.

At some point in your playing, the amount of people available to play even of the PUG variety comes into play and can seriously affect your game. The AH sucks, the LFG sucks, everything just sucks when you're struggling to find a reason to keep playing. More people solves that.

But, since Blizzard is all about the $$$$ I'm sure they'd rather milk paid transfers forever. There's no doubt in my mind that this game had a surge with the expansion, servers were opened and promptly abandoned once people hit 70 and decided that neither Arena nor 25-man raids were their thing. It's time to admit that they didn't need as many servers as they opened and go ahead and dissolve the less popular ones and disperse the populations to better realms.

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