I’m appalled that the blizzard that promised layering would be gone, acknowledging that it is a bad technology for classic (https://www.reddit.com/r/classicwow/comments/g44byr/quote_that_did_not_age_well/) is now absolutely backtracking with complete shamelessness. Please take layering back, the benefit is not worth the cascade of costs in this cost/benefit analysis.
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Remember when blizzard had team meeting and they thought 7 pvp servers for america would be enough at launch 
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This is gonna go down in history as one of the most naive blue posts of all time
If actions are able to get tracked globally, why aren’t world buffs?
Make world buffs work across layers its stupid otherwise.
You need a long term solution, and like others have said, there is no reason not to solve a second problem at the same time with FACTION QUEUES. Extremely important not just for classic but for TBC too if you end up doing that, since if they don’t exist things are just going to get worse with the addition of blood elves.
If a server’s max capacity is 5000, for example, there should be 2500 ‘slots’ for Alliance and 2500 ‘slots’ for Horde. What that means is that if 5500 people are trying to play but only 2400 are Alliance and 3100 are Horde, the Alliance has no queue while the Horde has a queue of 600.
For lower pop servers, you can add a sliding ratio where regardless of current total players, if more than 60% of players are one faction, any more than that get placed in queue until the ratio falls back below 60/40.
You can’t just slap those in immediately because many servers have been ruined (brought past the point of no return with 80/20 or worse ratios) by free and paid transfers through no fault of their original inhabitants, so you should start with much lower, more lenient thresholds (and give ample advance warning) for the most lopsided servers and work your way up as things even out, keeping free faction-specific transfers open for the soon-to-be-queued faction towards a server that needs them in the meanwhile.
I’m lucky to be on a relatively balanced server (40-60 Alliance-Horde according to IFpro anyway, about as balanced as you can expect given the overall player pool in vanilla PvP servers), but some PvP servers have become de-facto PvE servers as a result of mass faction exodus and I’m afraid that is going to be the norm in TBC if you guys keep doing what you’re doing.
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Where are the population concerns for the half a dozen others realms?
Thanks for completely ruining Incendius Horde.
Several people now are reporting successfully dropping heads
in both layers staggered.
I can not validate it, can not enter those realms, but maybe you could?
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You know Kaivax,
If you actually start banning BOTS you can sort most of your (and our) problems.
Difficult to detect you say?
Just get your GMs to walk around. Bots farm anything and everything. There are sooooo many of them in Arathi Highlands. 30-35lvl mages both horde and alliance, very easily recognizable, especially if your GM is the opposing faction and actually attacks them.
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It’s confirmed, each layer is 100% independent for the buff locking.
On my server we are trying to keep them as synchronized as possible to keep things simple.
Cool, good deal 
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This is why I unsubscribed from Classic, layering was appropriate during launch week, servers should have been added as dictated by demand.
Guess the other option was taken, drive your customers away. 
They address this in the post. Those realms weren’t overpopulated because of a shortage of realms available, it was because everyone was picking the realms labelled “Full” despite their queues, even when other realms were available.
At release there were plenty of realms without queues available. If you picked a realm at launch with queues on it then that’s fine, there are good reasons to do so even, but that was your choice and you look silly complaining about it now.
Yeah I feel you here. Guild transferred, and I missed the window for a free transfer to join them. The way Blizzard is going about this server imbalance is really disappointing. I like the sliding scale idea Keeper ^^ had. Although there needs to be a round table discussion on the different ways to successfully remove imbalance from servers and keep communication open with the community so they can get feedback or open a feedback post for ideas they might not have thought of so they can make a better decision. Anyhow this has all left a bad taste in my mouth, and can only hope it will be fixed soon.
Okay, so you are implementing layering AND locking the larger servers? What are people like me supposed to do who WANT to invite people to try to play but also don’t want to give up on all of the progress we have made on our established servers just to facilitate inviting people?
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You know what the saddest part of this whole thing is… my son joined world of Warcraft a week before they locked the server(NON OF WHICH WAS COMMUNICATED VIA EMAIL TO PLAYERS ACCOUNTS ONLY THROUGH THE FORUMS, WHICH I HAVE NO REASON TO CHECK). Unannounced to me I figured I would surprise him and join him on his server which I had a current lvl 60 on the opposite faction.
So I transferred off my lvl 60 on the realm to join him and went go create a character and its locked(ONCE AGAIN NO WARNING FROM BLIZZARD), I am 5 days into a new sub. I have zero desire to play this game without being able to play with my Son, I relived my late teens leveling to 60 back at launch. I reached out via ticket and they told me there is nothing they can do and have zero influence over in game.
Here is blizzard response:
"When a server is locked, you won’t be able to create characters unless you already have characters on that realm.
- If you delete all your characters, you won’t be able to create any new ones.
– That means, at the moment, it isn’t possible to switch factions on a PvP realm.
This restriction is based on your individual WoW account, not your Battle.net account.
- If you have characters on a locked server on WoW1, and start a new WoW account, you won’t be able to create characters on that server on the new account.
If a server is locked, you -cannot- transfer any characters to that server - not even if you already have characters on the server. All transfers to it are blocked.
- You’ll receive a generic error if you try.
- Customer Service cannot bypass this restriction - again, not even if you already have characters on the server.
– If you’re trying to transfer to a locked server, you’ll need to wait until the lock is lifted, or choose a different server.
I don’t mind if your going to lock a realm to character transfers but to lock it to new character creation boggles my mind, You’ve already added layering.
I have supported this product for 15+ years. I wanted to simply enjoy the game with my family and new friends I would make along the way - I get told NO by blizzard customer support. Even tho I had an existing character on the realm but of a different faction.
This is pathetic and frankly really sad. I don’t mind server ques but once you add layering block transfers and allow character creation.
I don’t expect my son to start all over again on a different realm away from his friends just so we can play together.
I wish there was a solution other then “We can’t”.
Until then Blizzard I will be asking for a refund of my money.
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Completely ruined the horde experience in Incendius, is that hard to do a proper job? you guys are useless.
Come play on Heartseeker. Afraid of too many Alliance to kill?
Git guud.