After participating in the stress test and experiencing layering first hand I ran into 3 main issues I have with it (other than the buggy stuff like getting stuck in major cities or having to wait 1-2 minutes after accepting a party invite from someone in the same layer before the game worked again, those I’d expect to be fixed before launch).
The first is that it is completely exploitable when it comes to farming mats like rich thorium and black lotus, a player can just get invited by a friend or log out and make a level 1 then log back into their main and be in a new layer. Mages could be constantly changing layers to farm the some AOE pack while leveling, or just switch because their spot is taken and they don’t want to have to fight for it. Same thing with chests, rare spawns, or escort quests, and those are just the things I thought up in 2 minutes, there is probably a bunch of other stuff that could be exploited.
The second major issue I saw was during our raid on Northshire Abby many of the alliance cowards went into world chat and get invited into different layers instead of forming a counter raid and fighting for their home. The same thing could be done by raids who find out that there is a guild between them and their raid entrance.
The third issue is that I don’t understand what it is fixing other than ques on launch, which I would rather know of on launch instead of finding out when I try to log in after phase 2 comes and the layers get removed. The starting zones are still packed to the point where quests are hard to finish, and I’d rather see everyone on my server or just have the first 2 zones sharded instead of some weird in-between.
I get that there is no perfect answer but if there has to be something done to try to make the launch smoother why not do something like creating a bunch of low population cap servers and merging them after the first week, this would not only allow for blizzard to have targeted server pops but it would also let them address the faction populations and get them as close to 50/50 on each server. The only drawback would be that people wouldn’t get to choose their server name or might have to rename their character, but think about it blizz, after a whole week players will be attached to their characters and might even be willing to shell out that 20$ for a server transfer if they hate their server name enough. More money, faction balance, no exploiting, and players won’t have to worry about what dimension they are in because the world you are in would be the only world (like classic is meant to be).
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My favorite streamer Tipsout (famous twitch streamer) was also saying these words so I agree.
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Hi Ookie,
Yeah I feel the same way. I was really disturbed by Layering myself in the recent stress test. I really wish Blizzard did something about this. I was actually talking about it with my friends about all the stupid things you could do. Like find chests and just layer into different dimensions? I don’t know what to call it. But there are soo many was you could actually abuse this mechanic in the game. I think mages have a huge advantage with this as well.
Just my thoughts on it.
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Agreed, I made a similar post, and was having the same issues in Mulgore.
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what did you expect? it’s incompetent Activision and 2019… just take a look at Modern WoW or Diablo 3… only they could find a way to ruin an almost perfect game
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Look, i understand that Layering may not be the perfect approach to this… but considering the INFLUX of players in one area … Layering is surely welcome for me.
Though, i TOTALLY agree with you, that perhaps Layering should be limited to the first 2 zone, of their race!(Durotar/Chuck “Barrens” Norris)(Tirisfal Glade/ “Spooky forest”)(Mulgore/Chuck “Barrens” Norris) - (Elwynn Forest/Westfall)(Dun Morogh/Lock Modan)(Teldrassil/Darkshore)
I like this idea.
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I originally was ok with layering, but have since reconsidered my position. I think I’m definitely for more servers and merges later on. I think the disadvantages of server merges do not out weigh the disadvantages of layering. Aka server merges>layering
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I’ve seen other mmos with similar technology have a cooldown and “cast time” on layer switches.
Like it takes you a 1 min to switch to the next layer… and it takes you 3 minutes to switch to a different one if you were to.
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Layering is only going to be active for the first 2-4 weeks, most people won’t have time to significantly exploit it anyway. If you’re crazy enough to power to 60 in the first 2 weeks and power gathering and exploit it for the last week or two to get a minor advantage good for you I guess but it’s going to be short lived and other people are going to have the exact same idea competing with you.
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At the end of the extended stress test session, many of the bosses were summoned but of course only on one layer, you then had to hope someone would answer your plea to be invited to that layer. I understand that when Classic opens for real there will be many players and demand for resources (quest objectives), but could this not be solved with an increased spawn rate rather than layering.
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Thanks for the post.
People have been calling this out since November of last year. Sadly, I think they have their plans at this point. I don’t think their modern servers can run classic as intended.
@abigaiil-tichondrius
Basically a underfunded French server was able to do this 4 years ago but a multi million dollar company can’t? I Guess the tech just isn’t there yet.
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OP, this boy STRONGLY disagrees with you
I think even just limiting layer hopping to rested areas would do a lot to fix this.
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I hear you - there are solutions, but I don’t think they want to invest in them. Seems like they are trying to put a square peg in a round hole.
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To be fair, Blizzard has a lot more players than Nostalrius did.
There are a lot of players who refuse to play on private servers, believe it or not.
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This seems irrelevant - as by the time the majority of players will even REACH this point - layering will most likely be turned off.
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seeing as rag, BWL and Onyxia are gonna be out day 1. people will take advantage to get world first.
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False.
BWL comes out in Phase 3. Onyxia and Molten Core are there from Phase 1, though.
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