If only time were not scarce, I'd reply to everything, but to hit a few points [apologies for crappy prose - pounding this stuff out]:
(1) It is reasonable and ascertainable to expect that SE will designated an official RP server. For this to happen, it will likely take organized community involvement. Requesting an official RP server isn't "whining" or "unreasonable" - it's an extremely basic, simple feature to implement. RPers are customers of SE and have every right to request reasonable revisions to the game.
(2) We should not presume that SE is utterly incapable of handling the population size on Balmung. Resources could likely be allocated to handle the increased load, and there are a variety of less intrusive remedies that could have mitigated any over population problem. SE for example could: (1) assess a higher server transfer fee for high-population servers; (2) provide additional in-game incentives to encourage players to transfer from high-population servers; (3) devote additional resources to banning bots and RMT schemes; (4) raise monthly subscription rates to compensate for the cost of maintaining high population servers; (5) designate official roleplay, hardcore raiding, and special interest servers to encourage certain player groups to transfer from over-populated worlds; (6) implement anti-idling features that disconnect players who idle for extended amounts of time.
Those are only ideas. The point is that SE implemented an overly broad, ineffective remedy that will do little to actually alleviate the strain on high population servers come SB. To make matters work, the restriction may very well harm the RP community in the aggregate for the reasons stated in the OP.
(3) Server demographics have changed so much that drawing analogies between SE's former perception towards an RP server and its current is not persuasive. No one knows whether SE would actually implement an official RP server. That is precisely why we should be taking steps to request that SE designate an official RP server.
(1) It is reasonable and ascertainable to expect that SE will designated an official RP server. For this to happen, it will likely take organized community involvement. Requesting an official RP server isn't "whining" or "unreasonable" - it's an extremely basic, simple feature to implement. RPers are customers of SE and have every right to request reasonable revisions to the game.
(2) We should not presume that SE is utterly incapable of handling the population size on Balmung. Resources could likely be allocated to handle the increased load, and there are a variety of less intrusive remedies that could have mitigated any over population problem. SE for example could: (1) assess a higher server transfer fee for high-population servers; (2) provide additional in-game incentives to encourage players to transfer from high-population servers; (3) devote additional resources to banning bots and RMT schemes; (4) raise monthly subscription rates to compensate for the cost of maintaining high population servers; (5) designate official roleplay, hardcore raiding, and special interest servers to encourage certain player groups to transfer from over-populated worlds; (6) implement anti-idling features that disconnect players who idle for extended amounts of time.
Those are only ideas. The point is that SE implemented an overly broad, ineffective remedy that will do little to actually alleviate the strain on high population servers come SB. To make matters work, the restriction may very well harm the RP community in the aggregate for the reasons stated in the OP.
(3) Server demographics have changed so much that drawing analogies between SE's former perception towards an RP server and its current is not persuasive. No one knows whether SE would actually implement an official RP server. That is precisely why we should be taking steps to request that SE designate an official RP server.
