Hi everyone,
Let me run through some of the issues that came up here:
1) Numbers in Australia - Clearly, we believe in the Australian market, or we wouldn't be working hard to do something different there than the usual PC release. Yes, WoW does have a great population there, except that it started really, really small and only grew that way over the years. Plus, it's a dangerous thing to make estimates by starting with "And if things work out for us like WoW..."
2) Character transfer - I'd love to offer you guys the option of transferring your characters between the servers, but I can't for an amazing hodgepodge of reasons. Again, it all boils down to different providers.
3) Playing amongst the various servers - US and EU are a special case, as they're being handled by the same billing provider. We have other partners throughout the world, and players can't cross servers. Of course, Australia being english speaking, I'd like to be able to make it work. So much so that while I was typing it up, I went out and did the research again just to make sure there wasn't anything we'd overlooked about how to bridge the servers.
4) Any idea that starts with "exchanging customer information" is a no go. There are very strict laws and issues about how that works. It was hard enough working with SOE to make sure we could get enough customer information just to support them, much less do some sort of transfer.
I really was expecting this to happen sooner than it will, which would have alleviated some of your problems. A lot of this was my fault, both to the delay in the contract being signed as well as misunderstanding as to what tools they have in place. But Australia is important to us, which means we're going to do our best to bring it in line and support our partner. Which, inevitably, means a very long plane trip for me in the near future. :-)