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I had a longish drive this morning and my mind wondered to thoughts about cost side issues as well.

If you have followed the development of the game from the early days, you know that they contracted for a commercial database system and support. The cost factor of these, based upon size, and the large volumes of data were reasons Raph used to support the single character per server decision. Every item in the old system was unique. I believe this done half due to VW aspects and half due to improved tracking against dupes.

I believe unique item identity is being removed with this new system. I am not saying there won't be a lot of unique items, but however many there are, it will certainly be less intensive to use the relational abilities of the database to track 100,000 unique items then to track millions of individually unique items in the old system.

I think they feel they can do substantial database reduction with this and therefore, consolidating the database servers and bringing large cost savings. This is evidenced by the anounced consession of offering multiple characters per server in the coming months, something that was 'impossible' just months ago.

The problem with this approach, of coarse, is that if a 25% reduction in costs also leads to a 25% percent reduction in revenue, you lose.

As you point out in your article, I believe they have misjudged existing player reaction. There won't be another rewrite in a year, the next change will likely be shutdown.