Layering is an improvement on sharding. I admit it, begrudgingly.
However, as we have all seen, it can be exploited: the gurubashi arena trinket to resource farming, to escaping world pvp altogether.
My intended solutions:
One - use layering as minimally as possible. As soon as possible, remove it. A few weeks of layering, max - enough time for “the masses” to proceed out of the initial starting zones.
Two - Confine and limit layering ONLY to the non-contested starting zones. This prevents people from escaping world pvp as there is little to none in the starter zones. High-importance resources like devilsaur, thorium veins, gurubashi chest etc… are not in starter zones. Literally the only draw back to this is the potential for people to exploitively farm starter resources (copper veins for example) and when leaving a starter zone you might be leaving the zone alone, and as you shift into the next zone you suddenly see others shifting out with you… as if by magic.
Three - Regardless of the reason, if invited to another party you move to their layer… after 3-5 minutes of waiting. While waiting is undesirable in classic wow a lot of the game is “waiting.” Travel time from place to place, boat rides, zep rides, tram rides, flight times, waiting for your group to get to the dungeon, etc… This “waiting” time is part of what inspired the community for World of Warcraft to become just that… A community!
A 3-5 minute wait does not cause any harm and prevents or greatly slows the exploitive farming of low level resources (since ideally layering is restricted to non-contested starting zones).
Any group dedicated to a cause is fine with waiting a few minutes. Dungeon runs, friends planning to group together, etc… a 3-5 minute wait to shift from one layer to the next is a minor inconvenience that provides a solution to an extremely major problem. Cry as you like, or don’t, these proposed suggestions would resolve layering.