Currently each arena only has an overall Arena CAP, what is needed is a Country CAP at the layer underneath the Arena CAP.
If the Arena CAP starts at 120, then the max from any one country should be 40 players. So if the arena looked like this:
40 Rook
25 Bish
30 Knights
Then 15 more Bish could join, and 10 more Knights could join, but if the 41st Rook tried to join he would overflow to LW2.
Also have a few lines of code that monitor country side switching within the arena ( ie... You cant switch to a country that is already at its Country CAP Max in the arena). So someone can't be sneaky and log in as a Bish and then try to switch countries in the arena to become the 41st Rook, but he could switch from bish to knight within the arena since Knights were not at the Country CAP Max.
HTC can still do the automatic arena cap resizing:
LW1 starts at 120 Arena CAP with 40/40/40 MAX Country CAP
LW2 starts at 150 Arena CAP with 50/50/50 Max Country CAP
When a player logs in he has the option of going to either LW1 or LW2, as long as the country cap is not maxed in the arena he selects. If the arena he selects is at Max Country CAP he gets a popup window giving him the option to change countries and still enter that arena, or to pick a differant arena (either the other LW arena or one of the EW or MW arena's).
Currently the Arena Log on page shows #players/MaxCapSize. This should change to #Bish/#Knights/#Rooks (MaxArenaCAP/MaxCountryCap format) :
LW1 = 25-B/30-K/40-R (120-AC/40-CC)
This new arena size display format would also give better visability of the side balancing health within all the arenas form the log on page so players can make a better desision as to wich arena to log into for helping to balance sides (probably some people will use the info in reverse to go to the side with the numbers, but hopefuly more will side balance then horde when they make the arena selection from the Logon page).
When both LW1 and LW2 are within 10% of max for the country cap of the same side (ie... LW1 has between 37-40 rooks and LW2 also has between 46-50 Rooks at the same time) then LW1 Arena cap bumps from 120 to 180 and now the two arenas have the following size limitations:
LW1 changes to 180 Arena CAP with 60/60/60 MAX Country CAP
LW2 still at 150 Arena CAP with 50/50/50 Max Country CAP
The next Auto size update would be:
LW1 still at 180 Arena CAP with 60/60/60 MAX Country CAP
LW2 changes to 210 Arena CAP with 70/70/70 Max Country CAP
The next Auto size update would be:
LW1 changes to 240 Arena CAP with 80/80/80 MAX Country CAP
LW2 still at 210 Arena CAP with 70/70/70 Max Country CAP
The next Auto size update would be:
LW1 still at 240 Arena CAP with 80/80/80 MAX Country CAP
LW2 changes to 270 Arena CAP with 90/90/90 Max Country CAP
And assuming a Max Arena CAP size of 300 the final update would be:
LW1 changes to 300 Arena CAP with 100/100/100 MAX Country CAP
LW2 still at 270 Arena CAP with 90/90/90 Max Country CAP
So this would be similar to what we have now, but would also have the benefit of keeping the sides close to being balanced in at least one of the two arena's of each type.
As the time of day transpires past the max players online and the arena's start to unpopulate, a similar automatic downsizing of the arena's could happen:
