Wow have multiple servers, but then again WOW have almost 10 million users.
One thing I liked about Eve online was that it was only 1 server/universe, so I guess it's technically doable to distribute a universe across several physical servers. But this kinda depends on the game, having all wow servers merged together would mean 100'000 people standing in one location (Orgrimmar, etc..) which would be hard to render / transfer the data.

But if there are no such hotspots then I defiantly think it should be one universe, maybe split up into zones to split the load or something.

How are the other crypic games in this respect?

If it turns out that there will be lots of servers, I think star trek groups like Hailingfrequency / Lotus fleet and maybe others should "recommend" a server, so that us trekkers can stick together :)

Yeah, I'd also prefer one universe. I want to play with all the nice people I've met here and on sto.com.

I've been playing Champions Online for a bit.
My "ulterior" motive for Champs was to get the Beta slot hehe
But anyways, its a fun game.
Champs uses one big server split up into instances.
My feeling is that Cryptic will use a similar system for STO.
They may up the player limit per instance (e.g. perhaps they'll allow a larger amount of people in Starbase instances). I think this type of system will work nicely with "canon events" or whatever happens in STO that will be "set in stone" in the history of Trek.

I'm kinda thinking "wow" on that aspect of the game, that it will be a collaborative effort in shaping the story of Star Trek.

I have a question: in your time playing an MMO have you ever seen 1000 or 2000 people around you at the same time?

In my time of playing WoW etc, the most people I have seen "crowding" around me could be 100 to 200 people (and severe lag from that), think Iron Forge or Orgrimmar in WoW.
So really I don't see what the problem is?

   I can see the benefit of both.  After playing sfc2 for like 5-6 years I and several other friends moved to eve.  We had a lot of fun there,  the one server is great, but it does have major issues with big battles, although it has gotten better.  Me and my fellow sfc buds that moved to eve were excited about being in fleet battles with more then 6 players. LOL
well we got our wish many many times however even with "everyone one the same server" the max allowed in a system was 700 people.  This was both good and bad.  It allowed us to theoretically have some pretty big battles, in actuallity it was horribly laggy, and unplayable.  Not long after loosing my 3rd capital ship without even getting to activate moduels i said well screw it. The main draw to me was the ability to be in some epic space battles, yet the game could not deliver.  In battles of lets say 100v100 it was ok, still laggy but playable, but at least our entire clan could all play together.  Well to make the GF happy after years of playing eve together i agreed to play WOW with her for a while, we both got bored with wow in 6 months, and other friends I found out that played where on different servers, so couldn't even play with friends.  But i will say the wow servers where way less laggy then eve's single server.  I personally would like to see a single server, however if the game is a huge success (lets hope) i could see one server basically for each major continent.  I mean lets say they did awesome and got 5 mill subs (half of wow) there is no way one server could handle it.  Eve has approx 500,000 subs, with around 35,000 on at any one time.

On a side note, if there is little or no depth/tactics to the game I know it will not keep most of the old sfc players happy, the "going to be on xbox360 scares me".  Imagine playing sfc with a game pad, either they get wasted by pc users which would happen in sfc, or they dummy it way way down to be a series of button combos, so that they can compete with pc users.  I mean look at sfc3 it was so dumbed down for the kids to play, that most players of sfc2 where totally let down.  Sure it had pretty new graphics, but they took away so so much tactical play that I didn't even feel it was part of the sfc series.  Back to the point I'd say One server to start with, and 500,000 subs will be considered a success, that would equal eve,s sub base, and they have been around for years now, so that would immediately put STO at top of the sci-fi genere.