I think that by merely implementing a server transfer service at all they have in some cases made it required to play the game to its fullest. Take the case of a server where several major guilds all transfer off a server because (as used to be the case), they decided they wanted to be in the higest pop servers with better battlegroups and a few more friends. That, in turn, leads the server to a lower population, lower average quality players, more discontent by remaining players, and more and more transfers. Pretty soon a server that used to have thousands of active players on one faction now has merely 100.

Now, you can't tell me that playing the game with a total of 100 active players is anywhere near the same possible experience as one with 5000 active players. Almost every feature that Blizzard implements is stunted in its usefulness and merit if there are so few people to play with. Everything from the new guild features to new rated BGs, etc. There is a minimum mass of active players required for such features to have some or even much of their intended benefit.

So now we have the last 100 active players of one faction on the server... they can't have nearly the same game experience as people on more populated servers, yet they are stuck on that server with all the time they've put into their characters unless they pay many months or even a year's worth of subscription fees to take their hard-earned characters over to another server where they can actually play the game as intended and as it is played on most servers.

So I believe that Blizzard has created this little problem for themselves by creating this premium service. And I think that makes them responsible for taking care of it. Maybe by drastically cutting prices of server transfers away from servers with a small number of active players on one faction. Or maybe by being more aggressive in their free server transfers to these realms.

On a pure business note, I really do believe that Blizzard would actually make more money on their server transfer premium service if they would cut the prices substantially. I think a price of $10 per character and no time restraints would actually net them so many more server transfers that the added volume would easily offset the lower per transaction price and the few additional costs involved.