Interesting, I thought for sure people would prefer population over possessions.
You can always get more stuff...

This thread qualitfy for the "utterly useless discussion" title.

Almost as "utterly useless" as that post. Ironic.

This is one of those false positives...

Would I move if it was just a new server provide? Nah, if it was a forced move then heck yeah! Not because I don't want to loose my items, but because I enjoy the group of people I play with. I've got a large collection of "legacy" and retired items on Thistledown, and I could do without them in a heartbeat, if a new server move was made. Yeah it's fun to have lore items that are 1 only per-server, or stupidly rare on a server but they mean nothing to me with out the lore behind them and the people I got them from. Though I could play without having them, I would not keep playing if it were not for the people behind them.

The term "server merge" by definition refers to a forced move. A server merge would consolidate the existing servers into fewer severs to focus a disparate population.

So the question at hand in this thread is whether you would prefer the status quo (low server populations, but you get to keep your items/characters) or a "merged" server (higher population, fresh start).

I would prefer to have a "merged" server(s) because there would be greater populations and I value quantity of playerbase over items/existing characters.

The argument that you have friendships on your old server is really moot because there is nothing to say those players will not be present on this merged server.

I would love a merged server, however I also already know there is no way to make that happen do to the code used in the game engine. =/

hmmmm. Given what I said above, that the "merged server" would be a "fresh start" and that you would lose your items and characters, I clearly did not mean that the servers would be combined intact. Obviously this is impossible given that every item on each server has an ID# associated with it and a merger such as the one you are alluding to would cause a conflict in these ID#s.

I tried to define what we are talking about here when we say "merged server", but since the word "merge" seems to connote keeping the individual servers intact as they come together, perhaps another term is more appropriate and less confusing.

Consolidated Server. We are talking about an elimination of the multiple servers that currently exist, and creating a new server (or fewer servers than there currently are).

Also, I should point out that this discussion is entirely hypothetical. Therefore any kind of argument that you would not want to have a Consolidated server because "it could never happen", or "Turbine will never do it" is irrelevant. For the sake of this hypothetical debate, those things are given.