EDIT: Some folks have rightly pointed out that with this idea as presented, everyone would be redirected to an Underflow server and the home zone would never have time to populate. This is a legitimate concern; a possible fix might be checking periodically on the Underflow for players’ home servers and offering to send them all back at once. There are a number of other ways to handle it, I’ve included some at the bottom—post your ideas!
As the game launch is settling down and more and more characters are hitting level 80, the low-level zones are becoming sparser and sparser. The level 1 tutorial zones in particular are almost always empty when running a new character, which subtracts a little from their oomph for a new player.
I imagine that the overflow shards for these zones are underused right now, so here is my proposed solution to utilize them—whenever a player enters a specific zone, the game does a check for the number of players in that zone. If it is below a certain threshhold, a popup appears offering to send the player to a cross-server Underflow shard (really just an Overflow shard), where other players seeing low populations should land. The popup would work the same way as exiting an Overflow (Offer options for Travel, Leave Queue, and Reenter Queue).
While in the Underflow shard, the game periodically checks the home server to see if the population is above the threshhold. If it is, the player gets another prompt asking if they want to rejoin the home server, as usual.
I think this would largely solve the issue of barren low-level areas, especially since most overflow shard party jumping bugs have been fixed. One issue I can envision is where influence cannot be gained for your home server while on an Overflow shard, but this could either be treated as the payment for not playing on your home server, or addressed in a future patch.
Another problem could be that this would be confusing for newer players, so the popup text would have to be very specific explaining exactly what will happen if the player chooses to travel.
Issue Suggestions
Some astute players have noted a fundamental flaw with this idea—if everyone opts to go to the Underflow server, there is no way for the home server to build players. There’re a couple ways to fix this:
1) As mentioned above, intermittently perform a check for the # of players on the Underflow from each home server. If the # is above a certain threshhold, simultaneously offer all players to return to the Home Server.
2) Alternatively, track server/zone population rates with every WvW reset. For that week, zones noted to be “underpopulated” always direct to an “Underflow” shard for that zone. In this version, there is no notification to the player that they are on a shared shard, and they would remain on that shard anytime they visit the zone for that week (unless of course the Underflow actually overflows!). Recalculate the “underpopulated” zones with each WvW reset, for each Server + Zone.
3) Outside of Hub Cities, do away with the concept of server-exclusive zones entirely. Because the Trading Post is cross-realm, the only real meaning of separate servers right now is WvW allegiance. Keeping WvW allegiance consistent (and having consistent hub towns) is still valuable, but other than that, treat ALL other zones like Overflow shards. When players from any server enter a zone, they first attempt to enter Shard #1 for that zone. If Shard #1 is full, they go to Shard #2, and so on. This seems like it would save a lot on wasted server space as unpopular zones cross-realm (like the tutorial area and mid-level zones) might only need 2-3 dedicated servers running at all times. The added benefit would be that you would almost never play in a zone without any other players. Unlike other MMOs the design of GW2 and the dynamic event system really requires many players in each zone, for the experience to be fun. If a future content patch adds zones that are more fruitful for 80+ players than Orr, Orr will be totally useless if it is completely empty on a given world.
(edited by Marstead.6430)
