I will do paragraphs and what-not. But if i forget the difference of “your” and “you’re”: Meh
and if a realm has no layers and only 3k players that’s fine because the people in game can play. there would also be as many other realms as servers, so the same amount of people have the same amount of space in either scenario, there’s no advantage for layers being had with this argument
Except, in theory, it doesn’t. Let us say 50,000 people all roll on a server. With layering, Blizzard can automate people to be perfectly split 12,500 4 different ways. Or however they want to split it. By giving people CHOICE in their layer, if 50,000 people all pick Layer 1 of a server, they are stuck there. 50,000 permanently. Good luck getting anything done.
The only way to “counteract” this is to hard cap server populations at character creation so you never get to that many people on the layer. But now you have issues where Johnny gets off work at 3 o’clock and makes a character on Server A Layer 2. Timmy, Johnny’s best friend since 2004, gets off at 5 o’clock and goes to make a character on Server A Layer 2 and OOPS server full!
Sure there is. The size of the queue.
if 50k people all pick layer 1, there would be a queue and 40k people would not be picking layer 1, they havn’t even started yet so they’ll pick layer 2 instead of waiting 50 hours to log in. the server won’t let 50k people start and then decide oh wait there should be a queue from now on. layering does that when you remove layering and there’s still 50k playing.
the size of the queue will be the same or worse, because you encourage more people to pick the same extra popular realm and discourage the other choices
Or the system lets ALL 50,000 players play on Server A and lets ALL 50,000 players into the game instead of jumping through hoops. If you want to meet up with specific people you invite them over and end up on the same layer anyway.
What you are suggesting isn’t even layering. It’s server merges similar to what happens on live where like 4 servers are merged.
the game has never been designed for all players to play on the same server. if you want to play with specific players, coordinate to play together.
just like you have to when you pick your realm
And that isn’t a possibility when you hard cap servers at a ridiculously low amount instead of resulting to layering. Your solution is basically to start the game at 250 smaller independent servers and merge them to 50 down the line. That is far more problematic than starting with 50 dynamically layered servers that can hold up to 5x the amount of people.
If you want the Vanilla realm-choice experience, all you’re doing is complicating the entire process. I want to play on realm Jaedenar, I shouldn’t have to fiddle-faddle with what mini-realm I’m on. A player will want to just get to login screen and go with the full expectation they have access to all players in Jaedenar. Else, what’s the point, may as well have 4 different named realms and not adjoin them, that way you at least keep your realm identity even if it’s 4 dead servers.
the only way you get to play with all your friends in the layered scenario is if you convince them all to play on one of the literally dead servers, because the main serves will all be capped with queues far longer than 250 independent servers would have
their technology solution for merging 4 different named realms is not really merging, it results in stuff like Nubling - Jaedenar for names, that’s worse long term than picking a numbered realm that drops the number eventually
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No, not really. Blizzard’s current implementation makes people have to work
to get on a server that’s already High. No system will prevent people from crowding on a server, but in reality that doesn’t happen, because no one drawcard is strong enough to overcome people’s desire to play.
The problem is you’re arbitrarily setting some 3,000 player limit per realm which is just silly and now you will fall into scenarios where PlayerA creates a character on Layer2 with the intention of getting away from high population layers and at first this works. He then levels his first character there to 20 and his buddy starts playing but can’t get into the realm or even get to character select. Now all his effort is wasted because his friends want to get into the game and make characters on Layer3. PlayerA has to start over again just to even play with his friends because his level 20 is trapped on Layer2 with no way to get it to Layer3.
Let’s say Classic continues to grow for a good part of a month. “Crap, Layer3 is giving me queues now, we’re abandoning this layer for Layer4. I don’t care about your new level 18 character.”
The point of [temporary] layering is to scale with the population until the experience won’t be ruined by overcrowding and make it so you can experience the game at all.
Really really bad idea.
When realms are merged, you have no say in who joins your realm. Many realms will be taken over by some language groups or have bad balance. Last thing people want is to be merged with realm that speaks different language or has such terrible horde/alliance ratio that it would ruin realm.
With layers there won’t be any surprises like that.
if the queue isn’t long enough that you’re willing to stick it out every time you log in, the server must be good enough for you to be able to convince your friend to sit in the queue as long as you do every time.
the same situation happens with layers as they are now. you pick realm 2. oh no, realm 2 is full with 50k players and now there’s a 20 hour queue because the only realms people play on are 1 and 2. your friend doesn’t want to sit in a 20 hour queue, should you reroll on realm 3 with nobody on it just to play together?
smaller servers spread the people out, because instead of getting 1 server with a foreverqueue you’ll have a bunch of servers with moderate queues.
The point is layering solves this [temporary] problem that will only be created by the hype surrounding Classic. It’s been pumped up for a long time, so you will see a lot of tourists that will likely not reflect the post-layering population for servers so this will solve the problem caused by temporary populations.
If come Phase 2, some servers are still highly populated, they will likely offer server transfers (to avoid now enabled queues) so that you and your buddies can leave together and not have to fight against the system that shouldn’t be working against its player base. But, the end-all goal is that the launch needs to go smoothly for the beginning flux or else you’ll be losing potential end-users crying they could never enjoy it because they couldn’t get the Vanilla group of friends together and only played the World of Queue-craft.
the other solutions also solve that problem, with less negative effects. layering is anti-vanilla, and the real classic won’t even start until phase 2 assuming they remove it
If they don’t remove it after the completion of Phase 1 then they will have lost my subscription.
Classic WoW will do just fine without layering and if it dies, it dies.
More recent Ion comments have suggested as low as a few weeks. Yes, Phase 2 is worst case scenario, but that’s what - 2 months? I wouldn’t worry too much about layering for what will be 0.01% of Classic’s lifetime.
The better the launch, the better the retention.