To me it sounds like everyone on Balmung would love an unslable large server that pulls down ather every 30 mins rather than a stable but medium populated server.

personally I would assign Ather for RP and be done with it.

as for SE current solution for Balmung I feel this is the gentlest solution they could come up with for the sake of the servers and the comuntiy.
if SE was just consided with the servers they would have just closed Balmung and spilt the population into 3 with no compation with how the spilts were made.

I have a single alt on Balmung and I would challange anyone on Balmung the time it takes me to get the wolf suit to convince me to poke my head in more on balmung raither then Exodus