About that black text of yours. On one side it is by far the BEST what has been published in these pages, at the other hand you conclude with the wrong statements.
Which MMO's are (were) successful in the LONG run: those that reunited their player base to avoid "ghost towns" (your own words): WOW and EVE...
While every newly launched MMO since WOW divided their player base to unseen proportions PER server (WAR: Warhammer: 4 seperate Tiers each with half a dozen seperate RvR zones, each with server only BG's, each with server only dungeons, each with X number of server only Public Quests).
I mean in games like WAR you actually would jump 2 meters high for meeting someone somewhere.
The same for all those other duds: SW TOR at launch: players stranded on single server play until everyone left.
What did Blizard do ?
2006: cross server BG play; no more waiting times.
2008: start of phasing
2009: cross server dungeon play: old leveling dungeons bahm: alive.
2011: cross server intro to Raiding.
2012: cross server open world play without loading screens.
2012: perfected phasing seen in farming (open world farms without phasing would be impossible).
Each time these Blizzard server tools pioneered the MMO scene , each time the forum trolls yelled , each time these non lifers who so called "know the MMO scene" were wrong...
Next MMO ?
Blizzard and you BET it will have cross server open world play without loading screens from the very start...
Rest is history. All players reunited in seamless open worlds. All 2 million per region.
CRZ is a very new - just starting - technology and pretty much will seal the faith of single server play faster than you might think. Certainly in Blizzard's next MMORPG. While the rest of the bunch (EA and Bioware included) will wait for their ... loading screens to happen...
The difference ? : a revenue stream of 1.2 billion dollars per year.