This.
Dear lord.... SE can just put a guesting (from GW2)/battle net/cross realm zone type of thing (from WoW) in and be done with it.
Everyone with friends on other servers can keep them on their friend list, talk all day long, join parties, zones etc. And everyone else doesn't have to sacrifice latency for social networking.
If you have no idea what any of that is, here (Google for more information):
http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/08...nsfers-and-re/ (Guesting hasn't been implemented yet, so the info is a bit limited.)
http://us.battle.net/en/realid/ (This doesn't say it, but you can join dungeons and raid finder with battle net people on other servers in WoW-- You can also display a Gamer Tag instead of your real name)
http://www.wowwiki.com/Cross-realm_zones -- This is where you can make raids with people from other zones... I don't play WoW currently, but I believe if they're on your friends list there isn't a barrier.
SE can probably make their own variation of any one of these things. The technology is there.
Again, if you include all of the new players ARR is supposed to bring in (who have no friends, yet), the majority of people will be perfectly fine with regional servers. You can't have faster combat, without faster data transfers... same with PvP advantages/disadvantages. SE would have to choose between its new battle system and the current one-- which one do you think they're going to pick?
I don't think anyone understands that SE's goal is to bring in MORE people; if it goes well, the current player base will become the minority-- this game is no longer about keeping/making you happy.
