Ok, I think you might be missing the forest by focusing on the trees. All of these issues are related, launch pop, server caps, queues, layering, pop decline etc.
Blizzard remembers (as has a record of raw data, no doubt) how realm populations changed over the course of Vanilla, and the lifespan of WoW in general. If they launch Classic exactly as they did Vanilla, they have a pretty good idea of how it will go. Why? Because it is silly to think that doing things the same will have a different result.
Bliz knows that not everyone who logs in around launch time will stick around playing regularly. Some will try it out, decide it is not for them, or takes too much time and unsub. Some (especially those with current retail subs) may stick around but not play that much, maybe just when they are bored of BFA and want a change. Others will play Classic a lot.
But the point is that Blizzard is expecting a lot of people to check out the game around launch, creating huge demand that falls off in a few weeks as the “tourists” quit or decrease play time, leaving a somewhat stable population that will play Classic regularly. I’m not going to speculate what that percentage is, anything I say would be a straight guess.
If Blizzard handles Classic launch the same way as Vanilla, they will have tons of servers to handle all the demand around launch, maybe with minimal queues, and the launch will be a good experience. The concern is that a few weeks down the line, as the population decline happens, many of these servers that were full at launch begin to enter population death spirals. Instead of 2500-3000 players logged in concurrently, you may only have 1700. Not great, not terrible…yet.
New players avoid the lower pop realms and roll on healthier servers. People on the lower pop realms start transferring or re-rolling on higher pop realms. And at that point Bliz has to consider connected realms for the low pop servers. And right around the corner from that is CRZ. And this is a reasonable scenario because this was the course of events from Vanilla onward.
Now Blizzard knows the players hate connected realms, CRZ and dead realms with few people to play with, so they are trying to manage realm pops differently this time to avoid making the same mistakes again. Assuming for arguments sake that Blizzard is correct in expecting a population decline on many servers a few weeks after launch, here are the options I’m aware of.
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Do it the same as Vanilla, creating enough realms at launch to handle the demand and let realms death spiral and either become ghost towns or connected realms in 4-6 months. This seems like a stupid thing to do to me, but maybe some people are ok with this.
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Have fewer realms at launch, a number in line with what Blizzard expects the population to stablize to in a few weeks, keep Vanilla realm concurrency caps and just let tens of thousands of people sit in queue until the pop declines. People HATE long queues and this would likely CAUSE people to quit Classic, people who might’ve stuck around and played if they could, ya know, actually play the game. This is probably the worse of all options.
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Have fewer realms at launch, in line with what Blizzard expects the population to stabilize to in a few weeks, but raise the realm concurrency to avoid long queues. This would create an inauthenic, almost unplayable experience as many more thousands of players are dumped into a game world that was not designed for having 10k people all playing in it concurrently. Launch would be awful to try to play in this scenario, and I know I’d probably have to just wait a few months or so before I’d be willing to play.
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Have fewer realms at launch, more in line with what Blizzard expects the population to stabilize to after a few weeks, but create realm sized layers with Vanilla sized population concurrencies on those realms, so Bliz can handle the initial launch crowds with minimal queues, by cramming 12k people on one realm and spreading them out into those layers. This handles the initial launch without ridiculous queues, gives Vanilla-like concurrencies and avoids the realm death spirals by allowing Blizzard to collapse those layers into one, unlayered realm as the population declines. This option may cause you to occasionally see someone poof to a different layer for a few weeks, but it handles the initial launch crowds and prevents having dead realms 4-6 months into Classic.
For all the potential downsides of layering (which I acknowledge, but think won’t be anywhere near as bad as some posters fear), I think it is worth it to avoid long-term population issues that are inevitable if Classic is launched the way Vanilla was.