Ironically, my home server is the Deadweight, and it has lived up to it's name. It's a lonely place there. I just started a new toon on the Fatman which, just as ironic, is very heavily populated. There were 120 people on Korriban last night. That's more than the Deadweight usually ever sees on Fleet.
So, my idea to combat this may be a great alternative to server merges. I really think new players should be 'suggested' which server to join. Suggestions can take into account player hardware, server population, region, 'preferred' server population and maybe even consider server Empire/Republic imbalances. The option to purely choose by yourself should always be there, but if you try and guide the new population to more under-populated servers I really think it can help with balance issues.