Quote Originally Posted by Eli_Jin View Post
Has anyone considered that SE can treat inactive accounts differently than active accounts? Meaning that while yes they are getting "priority" to move to their default new server just like all of the active accounts, but they can easily weight them differently. For example if they have stats that say after every major patch about 1 in 5 (a guestimate, exact number only known by SE) inactive players come back to check it out. Then they can say that every 5 inactive players = 1 active player spot.

For that matter they can also weigh active players as well. If active player X is online average 8 hours a day for the last 6 months, and active player Y is online average 4 hours a day for the last 6 months, then player X takes twice as much space as player Y. They can go even further by factoring in timezone played in to help even it out. I recall SE saying early on something about wanting to help ensure that the server transfer process takes into account timezones so that players can find parties at any time of the day (though that may not apply as much to the EU server since they are the minority player base).

Edit: This would also explain why the full/not full server status on the World Transfer Application page only updates several times a day instead of instantly. Their servers need time to process the change activity and calculate full-ness of each server based on player timezone and playtime.
The page actually updates super fast. I've watched servers come up and down again in the span of seconds.