That's true. Used to be FREE to transfer ONTO FV back when the server pop was dying but now it's so busy they stopped allowing free. I think you can still transfer FREE to Zek. But you can also leave Zek (dunno if that's free, prolly not) but FV is a one-way transfer. Once you're there, you're there till they close down the servers!
I'm not exactly sure the FREE transfer is whole story behind why FV became populated over the last year and half. I would wager its also in part due to the introduction of Krono.
People realized it was much faster to get a fully raid geared toon buying Krono and trading for armor and plat. Gave people the advantage of spending less time ingame and more time in RL.
I seem to recall at one time you could do this and you would be naked except for your epic. It required petitioning, IIRC. Anyone else know for sure? Under the new management I very much doubt this could happen since they want to spend the least amount of time having human interaction with players as possible, evidently.