World Swarms Readded

Currently if swarms were to be reintroduced there would be several major issues; lag, rip afks, lower levels getting wrecked and higher levels one-shotting everything, merchants would also be annoying to use while they're happening if you're the same level as the cities. I will solve all of these in a massive wall of text. Please tell me in comments if anything needs balancing.

How to know when a swarm is happening:

There would be a shout across the world that they're in saying the city that they're and when it'll start, these would be original messages such as: 'Rumours in the pubs in Nemract talk about an marching horde from Ancient Nemract arriving in 10mins.' These would happen at 10,5,3,2 and 1 mins from the start. The higher the city level the lower the chance of a swarm spawning, this way there'll still be some higher level swarms but lower levels players would still be able to participate in most swarms.

How to get into a swarm:
When you start a quest of a level equal to a cities level you will gain access to a 'siege room' this would be a room with a teleporter in it which you have to go down a ladder to enter(so no warriors can charge in). This would take players to a copy of the city surrounded by barrier blocks(so you can't run), this would be on a seperate server like guild wars. The teleporter would close after the time from the shouts has run out but there would be a preparation time of one min to allow anyone with a bad connection to get into the raid properly. This saves afks, it also only gives people in the swarm lag but they'll be expecting it

During a swarm:
Mobs would spawn in waves, the amount of mobs would depend on the amount of players, I would say how many but I can't balance things. Mobs from the wave would also spawn in random spots(within the city boundaries of course and not 100blocks up). These would be mobs common in the area around the city and also a few others that are themed like them, to make it more interesting there would be a few different types of mobs including healers to make it more difficult, there would be no elemental weaknesses/strengths as that would make balancing more difficult. Mobs would give a low amount of xp for the city level(main reward is at the end).There would then be a final very difficult boss whose health and dmg also depends on the amount of players in the raid, it would also summon in minions and have larger AoE spells as it'll be fought by many people. If you die during a raid(they won't be camp the spawning places anymore) you'll 'wake up' in a house in the city that you were defending, in chat it would say: 'There's a note beside you it says: You were heavily injured and almost died while defending the city, some other defenders dragged you in here where I cared for your wound.' Or something similar, you won't lose any soul points but you won't be able to re-enter the raid nor get the rewards!

Rewards:
At the end of the swarm everyone still alive will receive 1/4 of a level worth of xp for the city level(eg if it was a lv20 city you'd get 25% of the xp needed to get to lv21 from lv20. This might seem low but at higher levels it might even be too much(please tell me if it is). You would also receive 1/2 the amount of emeralds you might normally get from a quest at the city level(again tell me if unbalanced). Finally you would get 2 random items the level of the city(like an item bomb). If you're missing inventory space these would be dropped on the ground but they'd have the same cooldown on them as loot so other people can't steal them.

Balancing things!:
Raids would be considered a boss fight so you can only get one class in there are once so that people don't get multiple classes in there at once
Mages heal spell should have a 2s cooldown, otherwise people could just be spam healed by several mages....
You would have to be actively participating in a swarm to get the rewards, maybe have a certain number of actions? This prevents people from getting to a high spot and afking
Mobs would do raw dmg to you depending on your lv difference with the city, this makes sure higher levels can still die while preserving tank builds and the glass part of a glass cannon
Your dmg would be divided by a certain amount depending on your level difference with the city this will preserve high damage builds, if there was a cap low dmg builds could do equal damage to glass cannons in lower levelled cities.
Poison and life steal would also be divided by a certain amount depending on level difference with the city. The reason that I didn't cap it a max is because in let's say Detlas then the poison cap might be 100/3(just an okay value I think, probably is really inaccurate) then someone with some poison (eg an archer using Cluster) would do as much poison damage as a full on poison build, same applies to lifesteal.
At different increments from the city level mana regen and mana steal should be divided by higher amounts(rounded up though). A lv100 with 10/4 regen will be a lot more powerful then a lv 20 with 4/4 mana regen.
Walk speed should also be decreased in increments as the player level goes further away from the city one, this once again prevents a lv100 from having 100ws in a Detlas swarm.
People should keep skill points but above a certain level depending on the city they'll just level our, this keeps skill points restrictions on items but it would prevent higher levels from having a 50% chance to dodge in Detlas which a player at the city level wouldn't realistically achieve unless they boosted their skill points a ton which is just unrealistic at that level.


TL:DR(doesn't tell you fixes to issues):
Shouts on world when swarm is going to start
During swarm multiple waves and boss
You do less raw dmg and receive more the further away you are from the city level(for balancing purposes)

 

There's still no way to get around the lag caused by swarms. Here's an example;

This was 3 years ago. With every new feature we have now and all the players, there's no way it could be lagless.

 

That doesn't matter. The lag on that server will probably end up looking like the video; unbearable. Plus, paying more money for more servers just to create lagfests isn't a great use of budget.

 

Guild wars are other servers, just like every WCx world is another server. Bungee is a plugin/program that essentially allows you to access a bunch of "mini" servers through a hub. You still need to pay for those servers, unless I've been lied to.

Whatever the case, the lag is still the biggest, unsolvable issue. Swarms are a classic feature; I'm sure the devs would add them back if they could find a way.

 

I agree lag will always be apart of swarms, though maybe instead of hundreds of mobs spawning constantly, they would be spawned more evenly or in waves to alleviate lag. That seems like the best way to go about it, but that's just my idea. (I guess they could also limit the amount of players in a swarm too in some way besides the server cap)