Hard nope.
To me that would be as dumb as a cut scene.
Don’t forget, quests are finite. There’s a reason that they’re designed to be possible solo.l
Not all of them were. Group quests existed back then, and they definitely required a group.
looks at Hogger
Don’t stare to long into the Hogger, man. He’ll eventually stare back 
Hogger did, but killing 10 kobold vermin didn’t. That lower XP because of being split between the group adds up fast.
I’m not sure about you, but I want to do dungeons with people, not mindlessly kill easily soloable boars.
Yup. I’m in that boat too.
At the same time though, grouping up can be fun if it’s done organically and you’re all just having a good time.
It can be, but at low levels, especially just starting off, that’s how you end up in Westfall where the only available quests are to go kill level 18, but you’re only 13. And then it just leads to just mindlessly grinding to make up a lot of XP when by that time you could have been getting ready to start looking for groups for deadmines.
Ah, Deadmines… how I long for how it used to be. Not the abomination it became in Crapaclysm…
This is the idea for large, but not too large, sharding in the starting zones. You’ll still have to wait your turn to kill Sarkoth or whatever, but it won’t take well over two hours to do the basic valley of trials quests.
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Fires Avail You Brotha!
As crazy as it was and as bad as it is to think about barely getting any leveling done in those starting zones at launch, nothing can make me forget my first hours in the game at launch. Nothing. Absolute mayhem, especially since nobody knew what they were doing.
While we couldn’t really progress much, it was still pretty fun.
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I just want the game - as it was.
I’m OK with queues, crowded zones, crowded or sparse realms and realm transfers.
In spite of all the talk against these Vanilla solutions, they helped make WoW the most successful MMO in history.
And now, Blizzard wants to use retail (sharding/layering) solutions to fix these Vanilla problems? Look how that turned out for BFA. People hate sharding in BFA, which is one of the reasons people were excited about Classic…and now they want to shard and, now, layer Classic - which creates more new problems and exploits.
I wish they would just use the Vanilla solutions (queues, realm transfers, etc.) for these Vanilla problems in Classic and maintain the Vanilla gameplay as it was (no sharding/layering).
I created an anti-layering thread here, fyi:
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It won’t be insane if you wait 6 hours before starting. It will mostly clear out. The solution is many servers, not some. If servers are low population after phase 1, all of them are merged until they are at least medium population. If there are naming conflicts, let them have a name like this:
Classic Illidan [Low]
Classic Stormrage [Low]
Both servers have a character named Bob. When they merge, call Bob from Illidan, Bob-Illidan, and the Bob from Stormrage, Bob-Stormrage.
Is it pretty? No, but it sure is much better than layering. Give both players the ability to change their name for free. If one Bob changes their name, the other Bob loses their hyphened name.
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Damn, I guess I slept through the launch, I kinda wanted to catch the dev stream like last time, lot of info on their server infrastructure and the usage from the realms, it’s pretty interesting if your into that sort of thing.
Well, I’m willing to bet the crowds will subside in a couple days as they always do, even without dynamic spawns it’s not too bad after a reasonably short period of time like a few days to a week.
Pretty much my thoughts on the anti-layering crowd.
No, it’s not sharding, yes that’s just 1 bad thing about modern WoW but it’s also 2019. A company the size of Blizzard shouldn’t be having major problems with queues on a game’s launch.
It’s purely a business solution. They can easily just have a billion realms and leave it at that BUT the downside is having dead servers when tourists leave and having to merge and delete empty realms. With layering Blizz can tell shareholders after the layers are removed “we had to make new servers since so many were packed full and had queues” because that SOUNDS better to them.
I’m super stoked but even I know tons of folks will leave in the first 2 weeks and through the first few months.
I don’t want layering but if it’s ONLY for a week or two I can live with it. The longer it stays the more negative impact it will have on the community.
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You’re definitely not wrong. But i don’t think it’s just for shareholders. It sounds better in general. The community reacts positively to servers being added because it’s a sign of growth. Server merges are a sign of shrinkage and people react badly to it.
It’s why they stopped doing server merges. As you pointed out it looks bad to shareholders, but it also looks bad to players. If 1/3 of the servers merged with other servers people would be all “OMG THE GAME IS DYING”. It’s why my server on live become “connected” with 2 other (low pop) servers. And why they developed sharding (blarg) as just a blanket solution to population fluctuation. The server list looks steady and that makes people feel secure. Shareholders and players alike.
I’m pretty much with you. I’m fine with it for about 2 weeks. A short term solution to a short term problem. If it turns out to a long term problem then a new long term solution (like extra servers) needs to be introduced.
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Dude they are giving us low priority spell batching. It’s already insane.
That is the key, isn’t it? I’ve only seen a few that are outright anti-sharding altogether. The majority of anti-'s are those (myself included) who don’t trust Blizz to keep sharding ONLY in the starting areas, and then not even there after the initial rush dies down.
It’s the “toe in the door” that can lead to a full blown home invasion. Remember the mantra: “Nothing is written in stone; everything is subject to change.” That’s how we’ll get sharding all over the place, maybe even CRZ magically appearing.
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Actually, most are fully against sharding, and only fall back on the “but they’ll lie!” argument once you tear apart all the nonsense arguments. Yourself included.