The burden of being in charge.

[Efrye]

Because you need to be a chef to know what sort of food you enjoy, or even what food is best for you? Walk into McDonald's, "Hey buddy, don't listen to me, just get me what you think is best for me, that's why you're the manager and I'm not"?

You can't compare food to game design. You wouldn't want movies to be made by the audience either, would you? Of course game are a little different from movies as well, but for the most part the same principle applies. That being said, he should definitely listen to the community - and he obviously does. For some aspects, player feedback is extremely valuable, since even the best game designers don't always know what would make the players happy. But more often than not, people ask for stuff that would ultimately damage the game, because they don't understand the implications.

[...] This is not conducive to happy customers, and the single best argument for is based around a hypothetical "Well, uh, maybe they'll make new, better friends along the line."

The main idea was to give EU players a chance to get together with players from the same time zone. If they just go with plan ② (A + B - X ⇒A), the server with X would probably end up being underpopulated, because it's not likely that many players switch if they don't have to. So there was a good reason for it, but apparently most people don't care.