One Character Server, Many Channel Servers

One of the things that bugs me about MMOs is that they are divided into many servers. I understand that the point of this is because no one server can handle the stress load of all the players playing the game. The beta servers often have higher specs because they are forcing everyone onto one server, but the moment they go into open beta or full release phase, the game is loaded onto several servers with lower specs. Most games do not bother to divide a server into multiple channels in order to compensate for the number of players. Instead, they release new servers and hope to spread out the population. Unfortunately, when the game's population drops, many of the servers end up being empty.

The question is why do they not separate the account, login, and character select servers from the rest of the game. By separating those, they can provide a common login point that they can use to connect to any of the servers rather than forcing you to be stuck on the server that your character is created on. The servers should just become individual "channels" for the game and you should be able to switch between them like one. A game like Heroes of Newerth actually allows you to connect to any of the regional servers to play with just one account. Phantasy Star Online and Phantasy Star Universe has around a dozen smaller servers that divides the players so that the lobbies are not crowded, but you can transfer between them to play with anyone else on another one of the servers. There is no reason why any other MMO cannot do the same thing with a bit of rework on the servers. Games have been able to merge servers all the time and end up combining all of their characters onto a server despite having name conflicts and such.

Having trouble finding a group? Jump onto another server to try to find a group there. Overpopulation and underpopulation would never be a problem because you would still be able to find players that are still playing. Some games have even managed to create interserver economies and that has often lowered the overall prices of most items for players. Restricting characters onto the servers that they are created is just annoying. If your friend starts playing and then they find out that they are on the wrong server, they have to start over. If you could just switch servers, then you can just go onto the same server as your friend and continue from there rather than having to start over just because of a simple mistake like that. If you want to PvP, you can just join one of the designated PvP servers any time you want rather than being forced onto a PvE server and then waiting until you can get someone to agree to PvP with you. You could just jump onto a PvP server and start wreaking havoc because that is what it is there for.