Would it be possible, since there is a lot of discussion revolving around it, to have a Blizz poster what sharding and layering are? What are the advantages and what are the disadvantages? I know for a fact having seen it in twitch and on youtube that switching back and forth does happen and it does cause effects that are not intended in reguards to resources of all kinds in the game.
Layering is supposed to be large scale sharding that is less noticeable. It sounds like it’s got some problems right now, but that’s what was pitched to us when they first talked about it.
Though exploiting layer switching for resources is something that has been repeatedly brought up and as far as I know Blizzard has never commented on what, if anything, they intend to do about it.
Possibly the best place to get that info. Link includes Dev Youtube that explains more.
That’s a negative, ghost rider.
Sharding is used to both increase the player population in low pop zones to fill the world and decrease the population in high pop zones to allow for easier questing. This is so you always see a suitable amount of players in the world. This is zone based.
Layering doesn’t fill dead zones with players nor does it thin out zones when there are too many players. It also isn’t zone based, it is continent based. It’s used to prevent server merges due to low population when the initial wave of tourists leave by instead merging or getting rid of layers after a certain point. Layers are said to each have a pop that is comparable to a max pop Vanilla realm. If a layer is too packed and questing is hard - oh well. That was vanilla, too.
Slightly wrong.
Cross realm zones ( CRZ) is what drags players together to increase population in a zone.
Sharding is a single zone size that splits players up when there are too many in one zone to ensure stability and playability.
Layering is basically a server sized shard rather than a zone based one.
1 Like
So what happens if this assumption that there will be a lot of tourists who leave is incorrect? What if we end up with servers where the end game zones are more populated than blizzard anticipates?
Why can’t they just merge the servers later when they know they will be less populated?
What happened to no changes? I don’t even think the dev team is competent in dealing with possible exploits. I remember MoP and hopping servers to check for rare spawns did that forever. There is so much that can go wrong why can’t they just not touch the game and keep their bad ideas out.
2 Likes
They can simply open more servers, offer transfers, institute the que. This isn’t a bad thing.
Head on over to the regular forums, or use some google fu, server mergers have never gone over well.
My server got merged and I <3 it.
1 Like
Great, it’s worked for many. Just as many, if not more, hate it.
They explained this already.
Layering you are put in a layer when you log in, and the only way to leave that layer is to group with someone in another layer. New layers are not made until the one before it is full.
Sharding people will pop in and out in front of you as shards are dynamically managed so all shards are the same population.
This times 100
1 Like
You sure about that?
That is a rare take indeed. Everyone I have ever known hated their mergers. I am glad yours was a good one.
More people to recruit for mythic s raids, bigger economy and the game doesn’t feel dead. The only reason I can think it would be bad is because of more world competition, being a low pop spoiled you a little bit.
But on the flip side you actually can find stuff you want to buy on the AH.