PREFACE TO PEOPLE WHO THINK THIS WOULD BE EXACTLY THE SAME AS SHARDING(it wouldn’t be)… feel free to skip to the second half of this post if you think it wouldn’t be the same as sharding:
sharding, using legion as an example, was per sub-zone… so, as an example:
in WoW: Legion, palemane rock, camp narache, bloodhoof village, thunder bluff, brambleblade ravine, the golden plains, the thunderhorn water well, stonebull lake, and the venture co. mine were all in different shards, and every other sub-zone of mulgore was also in separate shards, and that was just for mulgore, in legion and not classic
but
what I’m proposing is that, in WoW: Classic(I’m not talking about legion anymore), using the example of the entire continent of kalimdor, palemane rock, camp narache, bloodhoof village, thunder bluff, brambleblade ravine, the golden plains, the thunderhorn water well, stonebull lake, and the venture co. mine, and all of the other sub-zones of mulgore, as well as every sub-zone in the barrens, every sub-zone in durotar, every sub-zone in teldrassil, and every sub-zone in darkshore would not be sharded, but instead have 3 layers, just like in the beta, except that the boundaries of the layers wouldn’t be at the end of the fatigue waters, but instead be at the boundaries between the level 1-20 zones and the level 20+ zones, but NOT between any level 1-20 zones
so, for example, when you walk from the thunder bluff to the golden plains, you, barring layer-hopping exploits that could already be done in the beta, will not enter a different layer
and when you walk from the durotar side of southfury river to the barrens side of southfury river and back, you are 100% guaranteed to not enter a different layer unless you do some layer-hopping by being invited to a group like you can on the beta or something
but
every single uninstanced inch of kalimdor that is NOT in mulgore, the barrens, durotar, teldrassil, or darkshore, will be one, single layer, instead of three layers… so it’d be absolutely impossible to do layer hopping into(but not out of) those zones, because there wouldn’t ever, under ANY circumstances, be a second or third layer in the level 20+ zones
so
kalimdor and the eastern kingdoms would be divided into two parts:
one part of azeroth would be the level 1-20 zones, which would be exactly like they were on the beta last week, concerning layering
and the second part of azeroth would be everywhere else
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now, with that out of the way:
Dun Morogh, Durotar, Elwynn Forest, Mulgore, Teldrassil, Tirisfal Glades, Darkshore, Loch Modan, Silverpine Forest, Westfall, and The Barrens, concerning only layering, would count as level 1-20 zones; every other zone would have exactly one “layer” at all times under every possible circumstance, and thus, would not actually be layered, but the aforementioned level 1-20 zones would be layered exactly like they were on the beta last week… there would be one exception that the razorfen downs sub-zone(not RFK or the dwarf mine near 1k needles, but just RFD) would not count as a level 10-20 zone, lest people do layer-hopping there to get mid-level herb/ore nodes when most people aren’t of a high enough level to compete with them for it and won’t be for more than a few days, as opposed to just a day or two like the 10-20 zones; all other parts of the barrens are not of a high enough level to be of concern
layering exists to ease the starter zone rush and, more importantly, prevent most servers from being ghost towns after the tourists leave, keeping the populations of most servers healthy(faction balance aside) in the long run, should the game generally have a stable population afterwards and also not somehow crash and have only tens of thousands of players before phase 6 comes out
however, tourists aren’t going to reach level 20 very fast, and, by the time players reach that level, the population at the level 20+ ranges will be spread out evenly enough that the rush won’t be present at those levels, and tourists are likely to quit the game before they hit level 30, if not 20
theres a big benefit and very little detriment to having layering in the level 1-10 zones, and theres some benefit(and detriment) in the level 10-20 zones(but 15-25+ zones isn’t worth it; charred vale and its high-lvl nodes come to mind), but theres just too much detriment to justify having it in the level 20+ places, what with layer hopping respawning silver/gold/truesilver nodes, arena master, rare spawns(such as the guy that drops the pacifier; a BoE lvl 32 competitor to whirlwind axe), black lotus nodes, high-level chests, teremus the devourer, the guy that sells the frost oil formula, and the fishing nodes from just south of grom’gol to booty bay and along the northern shore of tanaris, which will have terrible effects upon the economy if they are left to be farmed at nearly triple speed by only a few players
and then theres the effects it has upon world PvP, which generally doesn’t happen in level 10-20 zones because, iirc, none of them are contested; I don’t need to explain how layer-hopping can affect world PvP
AND IF I HAVE TO EDIT IN THOSE TWITCH CLIPS OF STREAMERS UNREPENTANTLY EXPLOITING LAYERING IN THE BETA, THEN I WILL FIND THEM(again) AND EDIT THEM IN
so, why does layering have to extend past the level 10-20 zones? there is only one, and exactly one, reason:
at the transitions between layered and non-layered zones, such as the gate of the mor’shan rampart, you could easily layer-hop right there, which could enable you to avoid world PvP without having to get invited by a level 1 guy
this particular method of layer-hopping could be prevented by causing the server(not the client) to remember which layer the character was last it WHEN said character was in a layered zone… and then, when phase 1 is over? the server can forget that numerical value
why can’t the level 15-25 and higher level zones just take place on one single “layer”(so not actually a layer OR a shard), regardless of the number of players present in those zones? just having it end at phase 1, even if it only lasts for 2 weeks, isn’t enough and could have damaging long-term effects on the economy
by zone, I mean, for example, zone as in stonetalon mountains, including all of its sub-zones, such as windshear crag and the charred vale
doing layering in such a way that only the level 1-20 zones are layered means that you could keep layering for until phase 2, and all of the economic impact will come from the first few days when people would be able to layer-hop to herb/ore nodes in the barrens and such more easily than before
and if you can think of an un-mentioned reason for layering to extend past level 20 zones, then please, tell us what it is
and this may look like a thread that I made last week… so why did I re-make the thread instead of bumping it? because people will otherwise, without knowing any better, tell me that this is exactly the same as sharding(which they did, and liked) if I just bump the old thread, thats why, and then said posts would cause the thread to be drastically less likely to compel blizzard to actually restrict layering to level 1-20 zones
and I also re-made the thread because BLIZZARD NEEDS TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT, and ESPECIALLY at this vital stage of development when they could’ve perhaps just been testing having layering vs. not having layering vs. different implementations of layering in the stress test, as per
so, it is quite particularly important around this time that the community expresses their disapproval of layering, and makes an uproar about layering, to prevent it from ruining the economy for months after its over, which this would prevent
there cannot be enough threads about layering until blizzard either does something about layering or at least says they will do something about layering before August 27, 2019