They could label them like they do for pvp, pve, rp and rpvpv
Just mark a few with “unlayered”
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You scroll down the server list and join the server and wait in the que… just like you will do when you pick not the server it suggests to you because your guild is on a different one.
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An unlayered realm is great idea and would satisfy both group sets. Having an unlayered realm is important, Eaglesgift, because blizzard doesn’t punish for exploiting unless it is egregious. I for one will enjoy my time on a layering realm because I have learned from Blizzard to “Exploit Early, Exploit Often”. I didn’t make the design, but I for sure will be using my time off utilizing it to the best of my ability… which is why everyone has a concern.
Seeing how broken Layering was even on the Stress Test gives me no confidence whatsoever that it’s an appropriate fix to high populations. I got the tag on Sarkoth, was invited to a group and he literally despawned mid-fight because I joined a group and that made everyone hop layers.
If they can’t get it working the way they say it’s supposed to, and come up with a solution to the severe abuse the system will have, it’s going to entirely ruin Classic for a very large number of people who want a seemless, connected world.
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so you want a 3-5 hour que? cool I like PLAYING the game more
Is that really the case?
People offered the option of instead having invisible servers on top of servers (layering) that enables abuse, to have mutliple servers that are bound to be merged in the future if numbers drop. For a pool of realms like that, names can’t double.
This is actually the same as layering – with the huge difference being that there is no layering or phasing or whatever. And that those merges only happen if numbers do drop. No abuse possible.
Sounds way better to me, but please tell me how layering is better for the experience at hand.
Let me abstract this real quick:
One merges if necessary and people know in advance with which servers that will happen, if it happens, without any layering and double note spawns and/or other problematic issues occurring.
The other (layering), needs people to leave to begin with, and creates immersion breaking gameplay that enables people to abuse on top.
Just yesterday I’ve seen another issue on the beta, when a player whispered a streamer asking him to invite him into his layer cause there was nobody to duel against in front of OG for him. The streamers layer was packed.
The streamer declined in fear of getting pulled into the empty layer.
I guess that poor dude just wasn’t lucky enough to have fun with the game.
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No. ![:black_small_square:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/black_small_square.png?v=6" ":black_small_square:")
I wonder just how WotLK managed to be WoW’s biggest win out of all WoW’s with what, 12 million players at the peak? And consistently 10~ million players.
Millions of people came over from TBC to WotLK, facing a massive launch for WotLK, yet somehow, just somehow, everything turned out in a way that for many it’s a very beloved expansion to this day, and for Blizzard it’s the most popular one out of all throughout it’s whole lifespan.
I was there for this launch. It was massive, and awesome because of it.
I was able to play very soon after the initial wave. Obviously there were issues, but negligible ones at best. No layering, sharding, w/e there to secure anything, neither at launch nor onwards.
Hmm yes… if only we knew better back then, and gave players an entirely different game defined by layering/sharding, just to prevent the miniscule amount of realms which actually ended up lowly populated and less wait time in the queue…
I’m sure people would have received the expansion just the same way! Same game all the way through afterall, with this new game changing feature for its first weeks and months! Right?! ![:clown_face:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/clown_face.png?v=6" ":clown_face:")
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Feel free to point a a single solution that solves this problem with no downsides to the players or the servers.
Scroll up. I already did.
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Sign me up.
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So mega shard single server? Are the all invdicual servers? What happens when one is lower pop with more access to materials? If you cant trasfer between layers or talk to other layers what happens when your community is merged down into the smaller server based on the pop numbers?
I think your idea does not axtually fix the issues as it creates its own issues that are just as pervasive in a different manner instead you are putting that problem off a month when the Shard layers walls are removed and suddenly all these people i didnt know existed are part of my world.
There could be lesser populated single servers in that server pool of potential merges. Just as there will always be lower populated servers and lower populated layers on a layered server.
Just think about it. Whereas a low pop realm would allow for more grinding of resources as there is less competition, at least people can only get 1 spawn at a time.
With the layering tech people can, especially those that get ahead of the curve, gather a multitude of spawns at a single time, which is worse. Its that simple to compare.
What happens when your server gets merged with a lower pop one? Well, nothing really, you will start to see a few new faces, or a lot of new faces (if you played on the low pop one before the merge).
Just as you would with layering all the time, but then again, you wouldn’t have to deal with all the other issues of layering and sharding tech for … actually… ever.
It creates one issue, and that is the merges. Which will only happen if player numbers for the servers do drop. If they don’t, there is no need to merge. It avoids multiple spawns of resources and immersion breaking behavior and more important: ITS AUTHENTIC.
Yes there could be a point then, when you would “suddenly” see new people you’ve never seen before. But at least mobs, spawns and people wouldn’t suddenly appear and disappear before you regularly as people group up etc. in the thousands per hour – which will happen and which will be visible to everyone. And which will hurt immersion and the economy big time.
You have a one time merge that sucks and I get it. But you dodge all the other sh*t thats going to happen with layering.
No solution is perfect. One just has way less destructive downsides than the other. And is more authentic, which is obviously really important.
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Do this Blizzard, give people the option of avoiding layering if they want. Pls.
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Better idea: wait until layering is disabled. Solves your problem.
Overall i think that server merges are actually one of the better methods to make communities more viable overall. That being said though, i do remember some of the free transfers that happened early on for the over crowded servers where a large group of players basically came in and just took over that server. While its more authentic to have single layer, the problem then shifts to the number of servers and how much are you going to merge.
Server merges in Just about every case are a swan song for a game. The last thing you want to see from your game is “World of Warcraft goes with Server Merges” as the head line on your gaming website as it shows weakness. Why do you think in the 15 years of wow there has NEVER been a merge. There are some dead servers and yet they still have not been merged. Now in the mega shard era its less needed, however, its still a thing.
I would like to see layering have a timer so that players cant log out and back in and be on a different layer in order to just solo farm materials. Beyond that im going to just suck it up and play the game. There is much more to the game than one month of play and to get caught up over that month when there are going to be alteast 22-23 other months of content seems like a waste of energy. I would think the amount of energy spent on the player base to solve this limited time problem is good dicussion but its clear there are things that could be done to improve the system we have as opposed to trying to figure out a whole sale new system in 2 months.
Clearly not, since they’re adding sharding.
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I’m just going to respond to this bit cause I believe it’s more than just odd to think that this is a smart idea to do.
The gameplay experience for people on modern WoW has suffered so much under the sharding system I would go ahead and say that they lost more players to not having any community, open world battles and having insane anonymity than they would’ve possibly lost by admitting a decline in players and merging servers.
I would actually bet on that.
Their fear of bad press made the game worse than it was and spiraled into even more people quitting.
How often have you had seen good feedback for sharding or layering tech? Almost no one likes it, most people try to live with it and some others don’t play at all because of it / or will leave the game once they experience its destructive behavior.
On top of that, modern WoW is designed around sharding, no immersion, interface clicking mini-game anonymity gameplay.
Classic WoW was designed around things that represent design pillars of quite the opposite polarity.
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Oh really? Do u have a source on that?
False, Blizzard is adding layering, please don’t spread misinformation.
If they were adding sharding, they would have said so and they’ve said they are not.
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