Rift's previously announced free server transfers have gone live with some remaining kinks - for instance, the crowded Faeblight server was initially on the destination list, only to be removed by the time you're reading this. That aside, there's an interesting detail that may have been previously announced, but was news to me - the game will now have "trial account only shards" where subscribers will not be allowed to create characters, and will be prompted suggesting that they remove any characters they made while they were trial accounts via the new free transfer feature.
Cynical comments about EQ2X aside, I don't know of any game that segregates its free trial population in this manner. There are very good reasons for doing so - beyond the traditional gold spammers and level 1-10 general chat trolls, Rift seems to plan on continuing to do one-time server events that encourage queues, and adding trial accounts to that mix is bound to leave someone unhappy.
That said, what will the community be like on a server populated entirely with trial accounts (and perhaps a few rebellious players who make new accounts and convert them to paid accounts for the sole purpose of being amongst the few players on the server to go beyond the trial level cap)? Will that environment be at all conducive to actually converting trial players into paying customers? Will the current referral program allow players out of the newbie leper colony to play with their friends who are already in game?
I'm not saying that it will work, or that it won't work, but someone who wants a sociology paper may have topic in waiting here.