I play on one of those 11+ servers, as well as earlier ones. The only difference in guild wars between them is instead of an uber guild dominating a single realm, the uber guild dominates the ENTIRE server. The result is that servers die a quicker death. Believe me the difference in activity between earlier and later servers is obvious, even if it's essentially the same result.
What this has caused is the seasonal migration patterns, in which there are not actually that many "new" Tynon players as much as old ones hopping server to server to start over. I am part of one of these uber guilds, and several members of my guild do this regularly where they go to a new server and just play the first week until the beginner's rewards are up, then move on to the next one. On a cross-realm setup, the competition is over within the first two weeks, the uber guild and some stragglers remain while everyone else moves on.
This happens on the earlier servers as well, however the main advantage is if you are super unhappy you still have 4 more realms to jump to in order to find a guild you like, or avoid people singling you out for extinction. On later servers there are only 3 realms, and since only Cerb and Baal are realm events there really is no escape wherever you go.
The reason why people are "scared" is I believe the older servers have a far greater investment regarding time and money. Taking down the barriers completely is untenable to them, as it now opens the server to experience this same result, which would have far greater consequences than it would on a server only 2 weeks old.
The formation of an uber-guild is inevitable, particularly when people spend money here. No one wants to lose, no one wants a losing investment, so as soon as one guild begins to coalesce into a superpower you have 2 movements: those that move towards the guild not to be left behind, and those who move to the next server. So imagine the frustration were this to occur among players who may have invested hundreds or even thousands of dollars into their characters, rather than low-level VIPs or freebies.
To some extent yes, people get too comfortable. However, at this point the answer is not to change the older servers so drastically.
The responses in this thread advocate for some server-wide activities, while protecting against a free-for-all scenario by dropping all the gates.
As a player on a later server, I actually advocate that later servers mirror the 1-10 setup, as the level of activity is much greater, there are more options in life, and a greater life-span of the server itself, as well as the people in it.
From the technical side it seems to be more efficient to do it this way, as it's simple math that infinite expansion is not possible in a world of finite resources, so the "overlords doing best for the game," per Qualan, should already be looking at how to contain the brush fire to make this game feasible in the long term.
From the personal side your friends stick around longer, rather than moving on one by one because there is simply nothing left to do as the server dies out faster. Unless you are willing to continually invest time and money into more and more characters, you simply become left behind.
So while the population posting here may not be "representative" of the majority of players, this majority who recently joined on a 11+ server have no conceptual difference between the two types and what the consequences would be of making them all the same. I'm also willing to stretch and say there are much less "pure noobs" around than people think, so perhaps in fact the forum does represent the majority. Qualan is well-intentioned, but apparently hasn't seen that the choices are either 1 uber guild in each of 5 servers, or 1 uber guild on a server that becomes much emptier, much faster.



