Actually it is not as easy as you say. Layering will not allow for unlimited populations, that would be counter-productive. Let’s see if I can break this down for people who still don’t quite understand how this works or why it will be used.
Problem: Blizzard expects massive crowds around launch of Classic. Some old veterans will return and resub, some disillusioned retail players will switch over the Classic, and some retail players will simply login to check it out without committing fully to playing Classic full time. Some people are taking a week off work to play constantly the first week. It will be A LOT of people trying to play the first week, perhaps several million. All of them will be spawning into starter areas that were never designed to handle those types of numbers all playing at once.
After that first week, the people who took vacation will go back to work and their playtime will decrease. Others will settle into their normal playtime, mornings, afternoons, afterwork, weekends, etc. Not everyone will keep up with the amount of playtime they put into the first week. Also, the retail players who are just “checking it out” will likely play less and less or go back to retail altogether. The population of each server will spread out in zones/levels and will settle down in their playtime.
So, the first week will have crazy concurrent population demand that will 100% start tapering off at the end of that week and settle over the next few weeks.
Here are the options:
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Open enough servers to handle the initial population demands with Vanilla level populations caps (maybe 2500-300), only to see concurrent server populations drop by end of the first month to ghost town levels. Result is dead servers that lead to connected realms and eventually CRZ. This is the scenario Blizzard is trying to prevent.
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Open fewer servers, keeping Vanilla level populations caps and just let the overflow sit in queues. Those queues will be horrendous, likely measuring in DAYS, not hours. This is a terrible solution that prevents players from playing the game and Blizz will NOT do this.
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Open fewer servers and increase the population caps to handle the initial crowds, let’s say allowing 10k concurrent players onto each server. This allows everyone in the game, but would make the game near unplayable, as all those starting zones can not handle populations of that size. It would NOT be an authentic experience in any way, and in fact would likely break the game.
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Open fewer servers, increase the populations caps to handle the initial crowds, but institute continent-wide layering, essentially making temporary sub-realms that can allow a total of 10k players on the server without breaking the game design, since they will be split up into Vanilla sized layer populations. These sub-realms, or layers, will share name pool, AH/economy and allow people to group, trade, talk or guild with one another.
As the concurrent population decreases after launch week, the layers start collapsing. So if there were 10k players on a server at launch, by the first weekly reset, concurrent demand may be down to 6-7k players at a time, allowing most realms to drop to 2-3 layers. As the next few weeks go by, players spread out, playtimes settle and the tourists leave or decrease their playtime and the population will likely be at a point where a single layer is enough except for maybe during peak hours when queues will be in place.