They added new servers after beta ended and release began because more people bought the game. However they didn't merge servers after everybody left so now a lot of the servers feel destitute. Even worse is that the economies on the low population servers are basically non-functioning which makes grinding a craft even worse since it's terribly hard to buy anything for a good price.

Furthermore it's hard to find a good leveparty outside of your own Linkshell even on Selbina, which is one of the most populated servers in the game. Even in Ul'dah there's only about 100 people or so around at any time and only 20-30 at Camp Horizon.

These numbers are incredibly low compared to what they SHOULD be. A low population like this is spread across how many servers? We don't even have a confirmed date for the PS3 release, so it's not even worth worrying about what it will do when that happens. Maybe if the PS3 release was during Summer, but it's probably 4+ months away if not in Q1 2012.

The fact is that the population is sparse in the first place and then spread even thinner across 18 servers.

As for the bad media coverage, I doubt anybody in the media has high regard for this game anymore, and even if they would, just by word of mouth you can tell that there is a relatively small population still playing the game.

That said, I'd still wait until the end of Summer since the string of updates that is supposed to drastically change the game is coming and may bring back a large amount of players with it.

To sum it up: there is good reason right now to seriously consider merging servers. However the best plan of action would be to keep it in mind until AFTER the next 2 or 3 patches and then see how the population is distributed.