I'm kind of wondering... if instead of a split based upon time of day, would there be the possibility of split based upon total arena population?
What I mean is... right now, you've got off-hours as no limit, and on hours as limit...
Instead of that, would it be feasable, and would it be POSSIBLE that a system be built where...
Every 15 minutes, the server examines the total population numbers.
If a single MA > 400 for 4 straight time period checks, lock the arena, warn of a split in 15 minutes. The split arenas stay in place until 8 straight time periods of MA < 400 after the first 30 minutes ... The new split arenas are the identical map that was used in the single arena. It would be great if there was a way that when the arena splits, it actually takes the current players, and the next 200 to "take off" or spawn, immediately spawn into the 2nd arena. When the "split" re-merges, then it takes the map of the arena with the majority of players, and merges the other arena into them. The biggest problem with the auto-split/join method is that it can split up squads who need to decide what arena to run in. But it gives somewhat of a "persistent" world, while still cutting down the "chat cesspool" issue. Obviously if that's not possible, than the current system of dump and re-join would have to be used.
So that would basically mean the main arenas would have to contain > 400 players for at least an hour straight before the system would even consider splitting the arena, and they would stay split for at least 2 1/2 hours afterwards, minimum. I know this doesn't solve the problem that some people prefer the split and some do not, but at least this would dynamically decide the issue based upon # of available players instead of an arbitrary time of day irregardless as to if it's busy or not.
I personally think that if the "cesspool" problems the game seems to experience with too many people on at once is too much garbage in the text buffers and too little self policing due to the anonymous nature of the larger numbers, that a better fix would be to limit the chat buffers to regions of the map, and no longer have an complete "total server" chat room anymore, but that's a whole different topic.