So let me just start off by saying this thread is an idea - and it's predicated on scenarios that cannot be assured. Recently the forum has been buzzing with the "end" of the Three Banners War. Not let's get one thing clear, we have no idea if Tharn's plan will work or not, so this idea comes with the assumption that he is successful... atleast partially.

Now, one thing we know is that prior to the Planemeld, Clivia Tharn was the defacto sitting Emperor of Cyrodiil. (Though not really.) Molga Bal deposed her and she was presumed dead... but this hasn't been proven. At another points during ESO we help Abnur Tharn and eventually he runs off with our precious Amulet of Kings. The obvious needs to be stated that the Amulet is supposed to belong to the Emperor, and she is the "true" sitting Emperor, so him returning the amulet to his daughter is logical.

So now pretend Clivia returns, amulet in hand - we've slain Molag Kena, and Molag Bal, and the Planemeld is now over. She can now try to regain control of the Imperial armies, and in effect expel the 3 alliances from Cyrodiil. This would end the main bulk of the war - but it sure as heck wouldn't close the wounds of war, instead the war would spread out scattered in all pockets of Tamriel - and this is where my idea comes in; Provincial Warfare.

Basically it would function like Cyrodiil does now, but smaller scale. Ideally this would be limited to the major 15 vanilla zones (not small ones like Bal Foyen). Each zone would be instanced away from the PVE, obviously, and each Zone would constitute it's own Campaign. The new instances would obviously have to be edited for PVP gameplay, i.e. removal of most NPCs, closing off certain areas, making the maps a little more barren etc.

Emperorship: Since the war for Emperor would be over, you would need an equivalent, this is quite simple imo; Provincial Generals.

Keeps: Instead of keeps and the largely cheesed.ignored siege Warfare, how about we have Outposts/Camps. You can still have small scale sieges - for example you could now need to use your oil to burn tents, just an example... or even some other cool new things could be added like poisoning water supplies. There would be 6 of these in one zone and whenever a team captures all 6 camps they'd be able to promote a General, with similar rewards to Emperorship.

Resources: You could keep mills and the likes largely the same - except with far less on the map, and with increased point rewards for holding them. Most maps in the game already have Farms, Mills, Mines or any combination - example House Dres Farms in Deshaan - these locations are already primed to be resources. They would naturally be more spread out than Cyrodiil as well, as in no 3 resources within stones throw of eachother.

Scrolls: I won't touch scrolls too much, just make one per zone to make the need to capture it more important.

All the campaigns would ideally last 7 days and then reset, with a forced change of campaign for the next week, but completely disable all switching for the days until weekly reset (with safeguards so people doesn't get stuck in queues - even with Gold or AP. In my ideal world they would also be purely Non-CP campaigns for performance reasons. 15 new Campaigns total. Forcing rotation would help prevent one alliance form constantly dominating the same zone, which is why I suggest a forced change every week.

I think this would be good, because you could maintain semi-large scale PVP, but I believe by segregating the PVP community into 15 Zones you can help mitigate the lag and crap performance of Cyro (though this may be wishful thinking.) The way I see it less people in the instance, the lesser the lag should be. The Campaigns would need lower player limits than Cyro as well, in order to force players to choose a different province from time to time. This would also make PVP environmentally Fresh, being able to play in a vast array of environments in said of the same old same old in Cyrodiil. I'd love to have a battle on the slopes of Volanos in Stonefalls, or in the deep jungles of Grahtwood, or heck - even in the barren scorched desert of Alikr.

You could also expand on this idea by making PVP campaigns have small impacts on the PVE versions of the zone. This is just an idea, but for example if AD were to capture Stonefalls, for whatever reason - all EP and DC players in those areas would have to pay 10% extra when dealing with merchants, repairs, stables. (No Effect on Guild Traders). This wouldn't be a massively painful punishment, or massively desired boon - but would reflect the volatility of Wartime economy as it constantly passes hands. You could also have one simple small change - add visible alliance flags in the zone, to buildings and castles, etc. but make them change to the conquering faction. Imagine seeing DC heraldry in Ebonheart? Would be something to behold I think. These are just small ways it could touch the entirety of the world.

I don't pretend to know everything about online gaming and servers, but it seems logical in my mind that making huge portions of the playerbase congregate in one map has been, generally bad... leading to horrible performance and lag... we also know CP makes this worse by beefing out the amount of calculations being made across the battle. I think this would be a potential solution - it would end Cyrodiil as people have been predicting - but also wouldn't leave PVP players with nothing, in fact (I believe) would expand the PVP experience and (possible) help with the gamewide lag problem.

1 Concern: We could keep IC in its current state, and assume Clivia hasn't repelled all the Daedra yet, for example.

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These are just ideas, please discuss peacefully and without anger. I also wrote this at 5 AM so please excuse my spelling, grammar and general rambling.