Blizzard says 80%+ will quit and that's why layering is needed

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
466

That specific example was even confirmed by the devs to be possible “within the early months” of layering.
The actually kinda sad part was, that just before they confirmed this, they laughed about their memories from the time one of the 2 devs was sniping a guild at BRM and how fun that was…and then they follow up with how layering might prevent can prevent this from happening for others :frowning:

467

Two things

  • Not many people are subscribed to BfA, so that’s a drop in the bucket

  • Most people who try Classic will enjoy it

468

big yikes dude

469

Well, seems blizz is doing their part to ensure 80% quit…layering, rcr, streamer gate, requiring a sub for a chance for beta invite, leeway and the list goes on. All of it adds up and eventually it is the straw that broke the camel’s back…the way of activision/blizzard of today.

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470

2-3 million people is a conservative estimate of the people subscribed to BFA plus the people returning for Classic. 2 million is a rough estimate of the people subscribed to BfA (look at Monthly Active Users, not online population).

Despite the fact that similar games of that era only having player counts of 30k or 50k at best? I think your claim is not only unfounded given that the non-Vanilla player is used to a far different experience both in Retail and every other game on the market, but also that the Vanilla ex-pats are a smaller group than they once were.

471

Nah, they probably just know that their decision to leave the Leeway mechanic as is will turn a lot of players away from playing the game.
Why play Hunter when you can ranged attack on a Tauren Warrior instead?

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472

I don’t even know what layering is, because I don’t really keep up with the news, but this forum seems to be really, really upset about it.

473

It’s like sharding, but different!
Basically it takes a pool of X number of players on a server and splits them between 2-Z number of Y amount of players.

So if you have 5000 players logging into one server and they two layers, it will essentially shove 2500 onto one, and 2500 onto the other.
To all intents and purposes, whilst layered you won’t interact with them. It will be like they are on a different server entirely.

However grouping with them does drag you (or them) to the same layer.
The big issue with it is people deliberately abusing it so that they can kill rares, or avoid players in PvP. Instead they just jump to another layer which hopefully fulfils their requirements better.

474

Thanks.

I’d have to say that I can see why they’re doing it - but I can also see why people are really up in arms about it.

475

if 80% will quit, why do we need layering? That should leave 20% of people perfectly capable of occupying one single game space.

476

What is layering? if you mean cross realm by all means that crap should go bu-bye

477

I get that not using layering will bring with it it’s own consequences.
But when i compare where and in what way the damage will be done taking into consideration both potential outcomes (server merges vs layering), then i’d much rather go with the approach that’s proven to work with the game: The non layered approach.

Does it kinda fail on a tech side of things in regards to population managment? Ya, kinda. But it’s supporting the game by allowing it to be played from Day 1 the way it was intended. Layering is not a necessary evil - a non layered approach is, if you want to see the game succeed.

With layering, sure, you have better server management, but you sacrifice weeks or months since launch of the Classic experience for it. You make people play a different game, and say to them “just hold on guys!!” all for the health of the servers, when everyone just wants to get involved with Classic…just Classic. No shenanigans for weeks or months. Players just wanna play the game they expect.

Instead of tunnel visioning on server health, What about the health of the community that the game relies on to do it’s magic trick? What about the health of the world immersion that players experience when playing WoW in it’s normal state?

Server health matters, to an extent. But it doesn’t trump the importance of player experience within the game at any point.
Sharding/CRZ has proven this very, very clearly, as it’s a widely hated approach in this MMORPG - because it destroys community and immersion, the 2 main pillars of this type of game, for the sake of smooth and convenient gameplay, and stable servers.

Even to this day, people are really dissatisfied with this “modern” approach to their MMORPG world…of course, because it goes against the premise it’s based on - the “WORLD” of Warcraft.
The “WORLD” is Classics appeal summed up in just that title/word alone. Layering is going to disrupt this, and turn this “world” into something else yet again, at a time where Classic’s gotta be Classic the most to convince players to stay…

Please don’t repeat the same mistake again. Instead, dare to find out what happens when you don’t push the red button, and observe what happens when you let the game do it’s thing, without any of the tech you already have data on in the modern game.
The core audience will play the game if you give them the real deal anyway, so you’ll have the chance to find out if tourists you now expect to leave will actually end up staying because of a full on MMORPG experience, rather than a modern, retail like one.

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478

Which is exactly what layering is supposed to do. If you think server merges are a good thing, you never lived through one in Vanilla. It was 100000x worse than layering. Stop making a mountain out of a mole hill.

479

Replace the word “it” with “everything” and you nailed it. The same people who complain about layering now will be the same people who complain if launch is less than perfectly smooth as well.

480

If that is true, then would you please explain in detail - one by one - how a server merge was “100,000x” worse than each of these Layering exploits and problems:

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481

Huh? A link would be nice to back these claims. I’m a wee bit skeptical considering that’s not how layering works and it’d have no effect whatsoever on server population because layering is done locally.

Again, I’d love any sort of link as proof they’ve said this. In fact the only thing I’ve heard them say in regards to estimated population is that they’re not gonna say anything about it for reasons of realm health.

This does not sound at all like they’re expecting “80% to quit”, maybe after what several years? Quite a while before we gotta worry.

482

The stress tests seem to indicate we WILL in fact be getting the “authentic launch experience” with or without layering.

Damn it Brack, you had one job.

483

Dude, you pop up everywhere with comments like this lol.

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484

I do like how Blizzard is trying to predict the success of a expansion (I consider Classic to be one). They have a phenomenal track record when it comes to setting their own expectations higher than the effort put into production of their games. In this scenario I see the opposite happening.

A surge will hit the game hard at release then die off a lot and after a few months many of those who quit at first will return and make an effort to stay.

485

I vote for resent, inside most of them there is resentment.
It isn’t the game they made and they are constantly in its shadow they are probably only remaking it because they had to for what ever reason it was.

There has always been a shadow of resentment in changes they have made to the game mainly focused around pvp back in cataclysm or shall I say a lot in cataclysm and some in future expansions.
All I really am saying I am pretty sure the people who are in charge are usually biased in a way from when they used to play wow before becoming recruited, they got defeated in pvp there fore try and make the game where that everything is raiding because they probably developed the notion that two factions isn’t pvp there fore wow wasn’t meant to be pvp factions. That is what I kinda get from bfa when it launched and when they told people how they were bringing what made warcraft great they made it sound like a pvp expansion with faction conflict but stated that warfronts weren’t pvp intended to begin with and people still believed it was suppose to be a pvp expansion even though it pretty much was definitely pve focused expansion with only island pvp added at the start.