Quote Originally Posted by Pixela View Post
I've been around long enough to see that what players ask for isn't really what they want, it's just what they think they want.

Here's how it goes:
"Give merge, nobody joins my crappy shouts!"
"Omg Square I'm going to lose my name, this sucks!"
"Please add more instances I can't do any content anymore!"
"omg it's so laggy"
Then they realise that a merge does not fix their issue because, again nobody wants the crap they are shouting for so now they have the negatives of an overpopulated server & the original issue.

At the end of the day, you can complain about it as much as you want (although I'm not sure I buy you actually care about FFXI at all given your name and post history) but it's pretty obvious what side of the fence Square is on since they ignore all these threads.
Only thing is the servers are running at about 25% of the population they once were. Back in the day about 2000-3000 people would be on. Now a days its 500-800 people. That is a lot less people to do stuff with thus people want a merge.