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Re: FFXIV Servers.
The easier way to have unified servers is to have more area for players to cover, more incentives for them to spread outside a few central hubs, and incentives for them to stay out of the hubs longer. For example, having the town guards kick you out for some time for whatever reason (quest/mission related; perhaps there's some kind of contraband which is easy to sell, but which you can be temporarily exiled for), levying very high taxes/lodging/travel costs within the city, and/or a threat of crime (think: "Wait, did that NPC just pickpocket me? The hell?") could all be gameplay reasons to people not wanting to be in town. On the other end, there could be things to make people want to leave town, like simply having gold in them thar hills (areas that are underutilized are more likely to have valuables in them, thus encouraging people to go to the least visited areas).
On the more complicated end, there's giving people the ability to live on a 'frontier'. This could be anything from allowing people to build their own structures in the world (with these possibly eventually turning into villages or more where people gather, where guilds work together, etc.) to just allowing people to become citizens of smaller states. For example, imagine if Rabao wasn't linked to San d'Oria, but were instead its own nation, and you could become a citizen. If citizenship has responsibilities and privileges like in real life, there could be very good reasons to want to move out. Perhaps Rabao doesn't have all of the amenities in terms of Auction Houses, and maybe you're summoned back to town more often to fight off monsters (or face strict penalties for dodging the draft), but the income taxes are lower, or you get access to some great transportation the country has (or perhaps all countries have the same teleportation, but some are cheaper, or have less stringent access requirements).
On the more complicated side, you could have things like laws. Let's go back to the example of contraband. Say San d'Oria bans Kupo nuts, after finding that the Royal MHMU staff are spending all of their money in Kupo dens on the lower east side. If you're a citizen of San d'Oria and you're discovered to have Kupo nuts on your person, you face strict penalties, no matter where you are. On the other hand, maybe Rabao doesn't care so much about what moogles put in their body, and sale and possession of Kupo nuts is perfectly legal. Sure, you'll still get deported from other countries for possessing them, but Rabao doesn't really care. Or maybe the larger countries will have treaties against the use of certain weapons; not being one of their subjects would free you of that. Perhaps the national religious body bans the use of certain magics, other countries don't care, or even encourage them. Maybe one country reallllly dislikes another country, and won't let their citizens in. If you want to get in, you have to obtain a foreign passport. And so on.
Back to reality, the more elegant way of dealing with server stress instead of instancing is to do something like EVE online does. Basically the way it works is that the hardware isn't hard and fast assigned to one area on one part of the server. It can all be moved around to accommodate for changes in stress as they happen. For example, last I checked, EVE even allows you to inform the company of when and where a major battle is going to take place, and they'll allocate extra server hardware to that area (and surrounding areas, to allow for travel and dispersal) to keep the area running smoothly even before everyone shows up. In FFXI, imagine if Al Zahbi ran on the normal amount of town servers most of the time, but when Besieged started, other servers started to jump away from less populated areas so that it could support as many players as wanted to come. For that matter, I'd like to know how FFXI's servers work currently. I'd hate to imagine that the servers are running areas like the Manaclipper even when nobody's there.
Basically, the problem should never be the servers in this day and age. If there is a problem, it should be on the client side; that is, an inability to render what's around you. In the end, the ultimate solution comes down to just widening the world and spreading people out. Maybe have your 'alternate dimension' type stuff be more common (as in, you'd do it just for a pick up EXP group instead of anything special) and have that be instanced, but the world itself shouldn't be interrupted like that. The downside of this is that you're probably always going to get to the point where you require some sort of random generation; be it pieced-together-dungeon-mazes or some kind of computer generated terrain. Personally, I'd go about it by having the globe rendered first, then drop in plenty of dungeons, a few cities, and give players the tools to build the rest. Give them boats to find new land with, some kind of mounts to cross uncharted terrain, tools to construct bridges and buildings, some kind of system to allow them to set up telepoints so long as they're some distance apart, etc.
The easier way to have unified servers is to have more area for players to cover, more incentives for them to spread outside a few central hubs, and incentives for them to stay out of the hubs longer. For example, having the town guards kick you out for some time for whatever reason (quest/mission related; perhaps there's some kind of contraband which is easy to sell, but which you can be temporarily exiled for), levying very high taxes/lodging/travel costs within the city, and/or a threat of crime (think: "Wait, did that NPC just pickpocket me? The hell?") could all be gameplay reasons to people not wanting to be in town. On the other end, there could be things to make people want to leave town, like simply having gold in them thar hills (areas that are underutilized are more likely to have valuables in them, thus encouraging people to go to the least visited areas).
On the more complicated end, there's giving people the ability to live on a 'frontier'. This could be anything from allowing people to build their own structures in the world (with these possibly eventually turning into villages or more where people gather, where guilds work together, etc.) to just allowing people to become citizens of smaller states. For example, imagine if Rabao wasn't linked to San d'Oria, but were instead its own nation, and you could become a citizen. If citizenship has responsibilities and privileges like in real life, there could be very good reasons to want to move out. Perhaps Rabao doesn't have all of the amenities in terms of Auction Houses, and maybe you're summoned back to town more often to fight off monsters (or face strict penalties for dodging the draft), but the income taxes are lower, or you get access to some great transportation the country has (or perhaps all countries have the same teleportation, but some are cheaper, or have less stringent access requirements).
On the more complicated side, you could have things like laws. Let's go back to the example of contraband. Say San d'Oria bans Kupo nuts, after finding that the Royal MHMU staff are spending all of their money in Kupo dens on the lower east side. If you're a citizen of San d'Oria and you're discovered to have Kupo nuts on your person, you face strict penalties, no matter where you are. On the other hand, maybe Rabao doesn't care so much about what moogles put in their body, and sale and possession of Kupo nuts is perfectly legal. Sure, you'll still get deported from other countries for possessing them, but Rabao doesn't really care. Or maybe the larger countries will have treaties against the use of certain weapons; not being one of their subjects would free you of that. Perhaps the national religious body bans the use of certain magics, other countries don't care, or even encourage them. Maybe one country reallllly dislikes another country, and won't let their citizens in. If you want to get in, you have to obtain a foreign passport. And so on.
Back to reality, the more elegant way of dealing with server stress instead of instancing is to do something like EVE online does. Basically the way it works is that the hardware isn't hard and fast assigned to one area on one part of the server. It can all be moved around to accommodate for changes in stress as they happen. For example, last I checked, EVE even allows you to inform the company of when and where a major battle is going to take place, and they'll allocate extra server hardware to that area (and surrounding areas, to allow for travel and dispersal) to keep the area running smoothly even before everyone shows up. In FFXI, imagine if Al Zahbi ran on the normal amount of town servers most of the time, but when Besieged started, other servers started to jump away from less populated areas so that it could support as many players as wanted to come. For that matter, I'd like to know how FFXI's servers work currently. I'd hate to imagine that the servers are running areas like the Manaclipper even when nobody's there.
Basically, the problem should never be the servers in this day and age. If there is a problem, it should be on the client side; that is, an inability to render what's around you. In the end, the ultimate solution comes down to just widening the world and spreading people out. Maybe have your 'alternate dimension' type stuff be more common (as in, you'd do it just for a pick up EXP group instead of anything special) and have that be instanced, but the world itself shouldn't be interrupted like that. The downside of this is that you're probably always going to get to the point where you require some sort of random generation; be it pieced-together-dungeon-mazes or some kind of computer generated terrain. Personally, I'd go about it by having the globe rendered first, then drop in plenty of dungeons, a few cities, and give players the tools to build the rest. Give them boats to find new land with, some kind of mounts to cross uncharted terrain, tools to construct bridges and buildings, some kind of system to allow them to set up telepoints so long as they're some distance apart, etc.
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