First time I've ever heard of it. And I agree - it's a brilliant move! Not wanting to leave their guild (or, if they're in charge, not wanting to go through the hassle of organizing a piecemeal migration) is probably one of the #1 reasons people don't take advantage of server transfers. This is especially important in a game like WAR, where your guild has stats, progress, and rewards of its own. If transferring servers meant losing all those because the guild had to be re-formed on the other side, no one would ever try it.

I am sure there will then be a mandatory server merge of the remaining low pop servers.

I think it's pretty simple. Why people would try their luck by leaving a lively server to enter a low pop one?

Mythic is maximizing the effect of the move by letting the ones unhappy with their server move to greener frields.

I think Mythic, in fear of overpop login queues, put out too many servers initially. And this is their way to remedy the situation.

Yes. Most likely it's because they overshot how many people would go on the game in the beginning, which in a sense was a good thing as it make the release of the game really smooth.

However obviously the numbers are lower now, and instead of evening out all servers, they're trying to fill up the biggest ones, spill some into medium ones, and leave the low ones dead.

What will they do with the dead servers? Who knows. Close them? Use them for another game?
It could be a cost saving measure as maintaining a server is pricey.

Either way, I think this is a brilliant move, especially the guild transfer.

ON TOP of the fact it's all free. They aren't money grubbers like Blizzard, or pick and choose either.

lol. you're the pathedic troll form mmorpg.com. And you got pwned by the sites admin. Who pays you to spin this, dindongdiddler?

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/209926

You are no rocket surgeon and it shows. Apart from the fact that 22 in 55 is quite far from *half* (funny how you use the "*" to try and show the situation as worse than it actually is), they just had a very high initial server count to accomodate the influx of first timers coming in the first days, which for an highly hyped game is a good idea. 33 servers with an healthy population after lil more than a month (and that's just in the US), with the game still selling strong (and with tons of people still checking on it, you can notice it easily by the fact that it's the game that receives the most hits by FAR in sites like MMORPG.com) speaks definately well for their initial subscription estimates.

These are nothing more than server mergers. The fastest in the industry and proof (everyone can see the low/low status servers) that stats taken from thousands of WAR players are freigthning true:

http://www.xfire.com/games/who/Warhammer_Online_Age_of_Reckoning/

WAR is heading right on the track to sub 200K subs and EA is doing the damage control of avoiding the correct number of subscriptions and talking of "800 K created player accounts".

Just as if we didn't know the game is already at 50% of its initial populations.

Reason? very simple : Marc Jacobs thought he had a wow killer and thought he would have 1.2 million players before the launch of WOTLK. Everything was cut for a september release.
Now they have a little problem: far too many servers, far too many copies shipped to retailers. Just talk to the retailers: in Belgium they have masses of unsold stock. Good enough to live thorugh the complete winter season and beyond.

Grotesk really. Every person willing to try the game will see it could never achieve a 20% market penetration.

Result: server merges after 6 weeks. Big hurray for EA Mythic.

Poor bossy, you continue to bring in totally baseless numbers and doomsaying. Maybe you're pissed that warhammer is better than your random game of choice?

Fastest server consolidation in the industry, where ALL games launched since ultima online (wow included) had and have several underpopulated ones, demonstrates just one thing, that Mythic cares for their players' enjoyment, and doesn't care squat about the doomsayers like you :D

I'm sorry, must be terribly frustrating to cry misery in the wind with everyone laughing in your face :D