I will now more or less update this with the new information and tech we have now:
Layering is problematic due to its condition and promised termination in phase 2.
IT REQUIRES NUMBERS TO DROP SIGNIFICANTLY UNTIL PHASE 2.
One Layer is ~3000 people, and they want to stack multiple on top of each other. That means best case (this includes this tech working as intended in the first place) the number of players would have to drop by 50%!! (in case they only stack 2 layers per server at launch – unlikely) until phase 2 in order to remove Layering without creating either mega servers, prolonging phase one in hopes that people “finally” leave or actually having to keep layering.
Im even more concerned now than I was back then. Why?
Cause right now, by any metric you can find, Classic WoW doesn’t look like dropping 50% of its player base in a few months at all, and that’s serious trouble when talking about this tech.
I’d rather see them put up a finite number of servers that maybe can hold a little more than usual (maybe around 5k players?) and sharding up until lvl 10. If all Servers are full, create new ones and when people have to wait in que, they have to wait in que and learn to love it .
If Classic really drops as hard as Blizzard obviously thinks it will, they can still merge – and at this point I really reallyreally would rather have merges than “layering” for months upon months.
Please reconsider Blizzard and thank you all for reading.
Yep yep, a valid point. I made a post about this when layering was announced. It is indeed a Risk. I also made a post that the bottleneck of begining zones is a joke, and it ruins gameplay. Even 3 layers wont be enough at server launch to stop the begining zone bottlenecks where you’re spending 1hour on the boar quest. That is not good either.
It seems they are using layering to avoid bottlenecks, but IAN also stated they are using it increase server concurrency. That by itself isn’t the best idea because of what you stated. If classic indeed has high retention rates, then you have servers that are literally 2-3x more the population cap than the world can actually hold, which means layers will never actually be removed because then you would have 3x the players in a world that can only support 1x. I gaurantee you this will happen on at least some servers.
So hopefully they can figure something out. They absolutely need some form or sharding or bottleneck prevention for the starting zones.
Based on what metrics? When I wander in to general and read posts about classic, most of them seem to show little interest other than checking it out. Heck, even on our forums here you see people coming in asking for changes to make Classic easier, and they haven’t even played it yet. The current vanilla community is probably around 100k tops. I am sure Classic will pull some more back, but it wont be millions. And millions are what play retail, and they all get a free pass to come check out Classic. Most of them aren’t going to be around long term. I expect 50% of those who create a character to quit before the first week.
Two examples (you can find many more if you just try):
Google Trends – WoW Classic is overtaking BFA Launch interest in its beta state 3 month before release. Without a super expensive (and beautiful) Cinematic or heavy advertising (BFA had the whole advertising machine behind it).
Reception of people that didn’t like it at the beginning. People have turned their opinion 180° and more than often even admitted that they where wrong. It generally takes a lot to make people do that. This comes from people playing the live game. Hell, the classic discussion has become more active than general discussion and the game isn’t even out yet. I have watched sworn in Classic “haters” transition from disdain to laughing and enjoyment into addiction in the past week.
I could continue but wont. I’m not kidding when I say that I believe that Classic WoW will overtake BfA player numbers several times over.
Given that Classic beta is more exclusive, this isn’t that surprising. Also, the vanilla community is aware of Classic, advertising would kinda be a waste.
I’ve not heard this from anyone other than a few streamers. They wouldn’t possibly be playing it to beef up their subscribers since they rely on begging for money would they?
Want to know what makes layering troubling? All of those retail tourists that quit, what happens when they decide to come back? Either for a retail content drought or Classic PvP phase. Dealing with not enough people quitting is easy, offer free transfers from high pop to low pop servers.
Layering isn’t perfect, but it’s certainly better than launching hundreds of servers that would likely all be dead by the end of the month. They do need to find a way to deal with the problem I mentioned above though. Alternatively I would have been much happier had they charged $60 for Classic and just released servers normally. Would have been less tourists that way and less retention problems.
Sorry but that’s straight up nonsense. You’re trying to down talk a multi million dollar global advertising campaign. There is simply more interest for Classic WoW without all that, just imagine Classic had the same treatment.
And Money is where the interest is. Let that sink in.
Also, have you taken a look into their faces, interactions and emotions? Of course some will act accordingly for money, but do you really think that all or most of them are just acting? Cmon.
Retail wow has been declining for near on a decade. The Vanilla fan base has been asking for Classic servers for atleast that long. I still don’t see what an advertising campaign would do for Classic. The people that want to play it know about it. At best an advertising campaign would pull in more tourists that would be gone after the first month.
It’s not surprising that the relaunch of vanilla servers, something that we have been fighting for for a long time, would have more hype than a dying game.
Yeah, it’s creepy. Why do streamers have to show their faces while playing a game? Just one of the many things I don’t get about the streamer crowd I guess.
This is not about me being right or wrong.
(Even tho you didn’t bring anything to the discussion but your own opinion).
You need to see the bigger picture.
I can defend my claim on solid reasoning and even statistics. This should be more than enough to make people at least rethink the use of layering because of the risks I’ve laid out in this post at the top.
One of the few things that can really harm Classic WoW as a game is a system like layering that hammers against some of the main pillars of its potential success – it’s immersion and community.
Actually layering could make the game fail more than the game could on its own without it.
But maybe, just maybe, that’s what you’re banking on.
Facts. There are at best 100k active vanilla players. These are figures based on pserver activity. These are people that actually like and play vanilla wow. Not to say that there aren’t people that want to play vanilla but wont play on a pserver. The difference between people like me and them though is that I know I like vanilla. They may or may not have on rose tinted glasses and just feeling nostalgic. As much as I like vanilla, it isn’t for everyone. I have seen plenty of people show up and realize it wasn’t the way they remembered it. And then there are the people who like it, but don’t want to play a game that will never see new content.
Now, on the other end are the ~3 million people playing retail. The group that was vocally against Classic ever being made. The group that cried when the item squish made leveling harder(I use the term harder loosely here, it was still very very very easy) The group that has been on our forums asking for shared tags, LFD, etc etc etc.
Will these people play Classic? Absolutely, it is being given to them for free, and retail has very little in the way of meaningful content. They literally have nothing better to do, may as well check it out. But to think even half will stick around, or contribute to part of the community is silly. Absolutely nothing on their forums suggests that they will like Classic, no matter how many give it a try.
Fact is, that Vanilla is one of the best games of all time – literally. Not BFA.
Fact is, that the game was way more popular than today in Vanilla – by far.
Fact is, that nobody knows how many people play BfA because the game tanked harder the more it distanced itself from the vanilla design and they dont report numbers any more for a very good reason and spoiler: its not because MAU’s are a better metric.
Fact is, that over 100 million WoW accounts where created, many if not most of them in the time frame before “oh so fun” Late Wotlk, Cata, MoP, WoD, Legion and BFA – yes, this has implications.
Fact is, that the sample size of 100k players that you name is not representative for the number of players that will like to play on a real, Blizzard quality, Classic Server and on top of that, isn’t even accurate.
Fact is, that World of Warcraft, in its original form, was a phenomenon so great, that the current game, all these years later, still lives off of its initial success and name recognition.
Highly likely is, that you underestimate the potential of Classic WoW’s success enormously.
Vanilla and BFA are the same game, World of Warcraft. If you are talking about expansions, subs peaked during wrath. Vanilla had the luxury of launching during the MMO boom(probably caused it). MMOs have been in decline for some time now. Other genres have taken over. It is highly unlikely that a 15 year old game will revitalize the genre…especially considering it has been available for free via pservers for a long time.
See above, dying genre, wrath.
WoW has distanced itself from vanilla ever since TBC. While I agree BFA is terrible, every other major MMO has a great deal of QoL features that us vanilla fans don’t like. There are only a handful of old school style MMOs out there, and they have very small populations.
That number was published around MoP time, and gave no indications as to hwo many accounts were created during each expansion. Also, it included trial accounts.
100k is being generous. many of those people logged in to pservers are bots and alts. And you aren’t going to convince me that a majority of PC owners are suddenly anti piracy…lol
And while I agree pservers have some inaccuracies, I would say that they are very accurate. Server populations, black lotus spawns, and I suspect debuffs are calculated wrong allowing bosses to take more damage than they should. It’s not like it is wildly off though.
Again, dying genre.
Doubtful. But I’m an actual vanilla fan. If Classic has one healthy server of 2500 I would call it a success. Having millions of retail players is actually something that I dread…
Which is exactly what you are doing.
Look, I would rather not have layering. I believe I posted above that were it up to me, Classic would cost $60 and probably have it’s own sub. I would also have had an open beta to give the tourists a chance to get it out of their system so not to mess up the launch servers. Might have even given retail their own set of servers separate from the real Classic servers. I think then Classic would have a chance of launching with vanilla capped servers and not dying within a week.
But that is not how the world works. Blizzard is giving Classic to retail, likely to help retain retail subs by giving them something else to do. The people playing retail are likely playing it for a reason. It has many features that the vanilla crowd doesn’t like, and they aren’t new. Most of those features were added during TBC/Wrath when the game was still growing. Sure, it is believed that half the population has quit since BFA launched…but guess what, Legion had many of those same features, so the people who quit BFA did not quit because of LFD/LFR, CRZ, etc, etc.
Classic is being given away to ~2 million players for free, and it is possible that of the ~2 million that have recently quit, some might be compelled to come back to try out the new free “content”. Keep in mind that these are the same people that cried when leveling was made slightly more difficult(and it still takes far far longer to hit 60 in classic than it takes to hit 120 in BFA) They have spent most of BFA crying about features that are a hundred times worse in Classic. I fully expect most of these people to play a free game that is being given to them. But to think that a significant number of them will stick around is just being silly.
I agree layering sucks, and I agree it will have problems. While agree it is possible some servers will be over populated when layering goes, I think it will only be a few, and more will actually be underpopulated. My biggest fear is what happens after the servers are balanced, and the tourists are reintroduced.
However they have also said that if necessary they will add servers. Their metrics can easily tell them if a server is seeing more people leave the 1-5 or 1-10 zones at far higher rates than expected, and predict that a server will be full for at least the first few months, instead of the “few weeks” layering will be around. (Not until the end of phase 1).
“a few weeks”
Also, a merge causes naming issues. You would literally be taking away a name from someone that they reserved two weeks before the game released which is going to cause all sorts of headaches. Or you’ll have surnames which are a whole different community divider.