By Garuda.Snuffy 2010-03-22 21:59:03
In terms of prices, I would expect prices to reach a median between the two previous servers, though the difference between say Gardua's prices and Lakshmi's prices aren't that wide. There are a few exceptions to that, for example certain RSE, but the prices on big ticket items has been reasonably balanced across servers before the merge by players who bought low on one server and sold high on another, eventually smoothing out prices.
In the end, there will be the the right amount of buyers and sellers; there is an equal gain of demand as there is supply. The availability of some rarer items may increase, e.g. Tactician Magician's Cloak +2, because they simply never existed on some servers, but nothing major.
The loss of the AH items at the merge may have some impact; I know Garuda lost some 12 mil worth of big ticket items to the AH, but that may not represent a significant amount of gil when looking at a normal day at the AH.
I do expect some short term price manipulation, but that's it.