That could easily be resolved by fewer pvp servers. But really, I don't think there would be a mass exodus to solo. Because those players that select solo would know that they could never move their solo character to open. Or perhaps even better. Let players make 1 open commander and 1 solo commander. Cool idea huh?
Never to open, but could move to group. So, between being stuck in open only, and being able to jump to any group or solo — including playing in Mobius, which for thousands of players is already better than playing in open — where do you think those players would go?
This reminds me of the Blood and Glory servers in Age of Conan. The PvP player base kept bugging the devs to create a harsher, more immersive, set of PvP servers, telling all the time how the meaningful PvP that would be created would bring back old players and attract new ones. The devs decided to give it a try, and the Blood and Glory servers were created. They did reasonably well — for a couple weeks. Afterwards, they became empty, a failed experiment serving as a cautionary tale about caving to the whims of the hardcore PvP players.
I believe something similar would happen here. Make it impossible to switch modes and players in open that don't want to be under the risk of PvP all the time would likely leave in troves, even those that play mostly in open. Having choices, options, is something very comforting, even for those that won't make use of those choices.
As for making one solo and one open commander, who would want to grind twice as long as we need right now? I doubt more than a tiny percentage of the player base would have two well developed commanders.
Also Lots of Pro Solo are using the word NEVER, an awful lot. For a game designed to last years you are being incredibly shortsighted. Especially when the next big update is WINGS! That's right because everyone plays Solo(?!) FD have devoted time and effort to produce their first major update based around a game mechanic that nobody will use because they're all in Solo...Oh wait.
1. Wings were promised far back. I believe back in Alpha, if not earlier. Frontier is just catching up with things they should have implemented before launch.
2. Frontier does want more players in open, so much that Sandro seems to be concerned about the possibility of fixes to the cheap tricks used to escape interdictions causing players to leave open as a result. Thankfully they seem aware that forcing into open players that prefer solo would result in a nasty backlash. As such, I would expect more features, such as wings, meant to make open less frustrating to be added to the game, but no "must have" element in open, and no restriction harsher than what we have now (well, the official one, not what people can get by killing the client).
3. Wings can have a solo use; hiring NPCs has been mentioned multiple times in the past, and wings are a necessary step in implementing that.
4. Groups. Wings are useful there too.
Also - FD will NEVER do x,y,z - the servers can only do 32 players etc.... Perhaps now, but in years to come? 64, 128, 256 Players.....I imagine a few of you are aware of Moore's law.
One caveat about increasing players per instance: when it comes to space combat, the "servers" are our own machines. It's the peer to peer architecture they deployed both to reduce latency and reduce their server costs. So, increasing the number of simultaneous players in an instance means increasing the minimum requirements of the game, both in processing power and bandwidth, and this isn't something done lightly as it means players that purchased the game and could previously play might not be able to play anymore.