The starting zones. I USED to be OK with layering but after looking at how everything goes down in Beta now that there’s time with it, how there are now band-aids over gaping wounds in the system - sharding the starting zones was a much better approach. Most tourists won’t make it past level 10, even fewer to 20.
I can deal with early zone sharding but not Layering as it stands through 60.
Sharding was the better approach of bad approaches.
Change my mind.
They are, essentially, the same idea. Just some differences in granularity.
You won’t hit 60 before they remove layering.
I don’t think they’re going to remove layering in 4 days ![:sunglasses:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/sunglasses.png?v=6" ":sunglasses:")
If this is something that addresses 90 people standing around trying to get the 1st hit in on raggedy wolves and troggs, I am all for it. The stress test starting zones were kinda rough
They are NOT the same. The layering is global meaning that people who hit higher levels WILL be sharded away from other high level players because of the high population levels of low level zones. Meaning they are FREE to play the game without competition.
Sharding is local and will cause people who level fast to be sharded together.
We have NO IDEA how long it will be in the game. We have loose promises about when the devs would like it to go away. There will be people who no life it and will have full access to any resources the desire while layered off by themselves because of the high number of players in low level zones.
I read that Ion is quoted as saying layering will be gradually taken out by phase 2. That sounds like longer than a couple weeks.
One time I tried to fart but ended up sharding in my pants.
Which is exactly what I said. A difference in granularity. Layering is an entire server, sharding is certain parts of the server. Phasing is also similar - it tends to be used to simulate time passing and quest choices. They are all ways of virtualizing parts of the servers in order to split people up by level and type of activity. The benefit is you can tailor an area to the best gameplay and spread the resource load of the players across several CPUs in a transparent manner.
Now, the trick is to do it unobtrusively. It takes careful planning and tuning to use this technology in such a way that it doesn’t negatively impact the game experience. Obviously there have been degenerate cases in the past that have lead to over/under-utilization of zone, faction imbalance, lack of player interaction, and so on.
You have to adapt, my friend. If the starter zone is slowing you down, walk past it. Grind out a few higher lvl mobs
Exploring is probably the better idea if you don’t have a full party.
I’m sure there’s dozens of other people willing to group up and separate from the Zerg.
I saw a couple of full groups exploring to take on higher level mobs on the stress test
I’m pretty sure it’s the most efficient way to run out of the starting area and grind level 5 mobs in a party, but I saw people doing it on Elysium and many died.
I did a cozy exploration route and hit level 5 after 2 hours IIRC, so still faster than through questing in a starting area filled with thousands of players (I played as a human…), but slower as the grinding method. Those who did this were always ahead of me. I guess I prefer the less hardcore method, it’s much more fun.
I forgot I’m the only one playing the game and we know exactly how long layering will last.
How silly of me to think of the community aspect of an MMO mid to late game over my own progress.
That is slow from my perspective. Think from the questing zone, I managed to hit lvl 5 between 1 hour and 1 hour 20 minutes. I also got silver to buy abilities and a weapon upgrade via one quest =P. I don’t see exploration as an appealing option personally. While it is easy to do, you are not actually keeping on pace with those that grind and quest.
As to this topic on sharding and layering. Currently Layering is the better choice of the two. Sharding only functions as a short term answer to specific issues in the beta. Specifically having to do with clutter in the starting zones upon launch and server stability along with it. However, what sharding will not accomplish is preventing a server from becoming dead. Layering holds this long term advantage over sharding by artificially having multiple servers on a single server described as layers. Thus they can introduce fewer servers to choose from in comparison to what you would have seen in Vanilla WoW which was a lot of dead servers with only 10 at most even holding a medium+ population.
I addressed this in my 1st paragraph.
Unsure what you think I meant when I said many tourists won’t make it to level 10 and even fewer to 20.
There’s your thinning population while starting a realm with inflated pop numbers.
The difference is that you’ll see fewer and fewer people with layering late game thanks to the pop numbers being continent wide. With sharding only early zones all players moving ahead will be together.
What’s the point of layering at 40 when 80% of the pop is still below - you’re going to split that last 20% of players among 3 layers? Rather than have them together?
Nah. Again, already addressed.
Because Blizzard’s goal is to have more players playing the game. Unless you are saying you are against having more people to play with? ![:thinking:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/thinking.png?v=6" ":thinking:")
Everything in life is a gamble. Cant win em all
Ohh this is rich… good freaking lord this is hilarious.
All that crying about sharding starting areas for a few weeks, and now people want it back? Perfect…
Absolutely perfect.
Indeed. But, I am just rolling with it for now. I obviously don’t like the idea of Layering, but I admit its the best option out of all the other possible things they could have gone with. They best keep there promise of having it gone by phase 2 though.