What's your assessment of the situation in respect of micronations? I'm sure you've discussed this among the staff. What do you expect from it? More teams? Or do you think the userbase in those nations will shrink as a direct result of the change, but you may recover users in the long term?
I think the possibility of some long standing users quitting is very real and in some cases 1 or 2 leaving is a very big deal. South Africa for example has 12 users (it's the largest African nation), say 3 people leave and it's -25%. In fact in total all African nations have 48 users altogether, it can shrink substantially if some people leave which will leave you with a D1 and bot filled D2s.
There lies the other problem all these teams are now competing in D1, what are you going to do in the first season after then merge? Create 4 D1s and then demote 36 teams?
What happens with our old users will depend on how they understand this change. They will have more competitive games each week and will have to face more good teams and play BB in a different way. We hope most of them will have a better experience, but it's clear that not the 100% will be happy with it. On the other hand, we have users from other micronations who would like to be merged as soon as possible and will have to wait.
My hope is that old users realize that there will be more fun for them with the new league and will stay, and that new users will find more fun playing against humans as well and we have a better retention rate there.
About the distribution, as the news say, the best ranked teams will be set in first division, the rest of them in the second one.