They started with server "phasing" as a way of cloistering lonely zones/realms together, and now we're moving onto actually hitching the servers at the hip.
Much like DAoC did in it's decline....
"Those lights, combined with the polygamous Nazi mushrooms, will mess you up."
"Tuning me out doesn't magically change the design or implementation of said design. Though, that'd be neat if it did." -schild
I get the feeling a part of this is testing how to do one big megarealm, which wouldn't be a bad thing.
Debatable. One big mega realm would be cool, but they would probably have to do multiple instances (or whatever) of Org / Stormwind / Shrine / whatever new Expantion Hub City / Starter zones they introduce next expantion to get proper load balancing, otherwise those zones would become a total clusterfuck with 50x the number of people in them then they were really designed for. Tradechat is bad enough on a single high pop realm. Imagine multiplying the spam by a factor of 20.......
So... basically a server merger where the merged servers have two entrance doors. Which neatly(!) sidesteps the "servers closing - game declining" look to the general pubic.