Layering only existing for phase 1 does not make it okay. Phase 1 is when the important things are happening - forming an identity for your character, levelling your gathering professions, exploring zones and finding rare spawns, hitting 60, clearing molten core, and, most importantly, forming social bonds with players you run into more than once and perhaps even joining/forming guilds with them. All of these things are exploitable or significantly diminished by layering.
Given the small number of servers being launched, some simple math would suggest that there will be MANY layers per server for the first month. This means that for just about every single person reading this post, as you level to 60 you will be playing on a server with 10+ times the normal population of a server (90% of which will be invisible to you). You will rarely run into the same person more than once. You won’t be able to trade items to people in ironforge without dropping group and inviting them to a new one so they appear in front of you from the anonymous mist, only for them to disappear again when you rejoin your original group. If you can’t find a rare spawn you can just have someone invite you to their layer and see if it appears on top of you. If orgrimmar is being raided by the alliance, you can get invited to another layer and continue crafting your leather headbands in an eerily quiet version of the city as if none of it ever happened. People will disappear and appear beside you seemingly at random.
The server’s community is BUILT as people level to 60 and form connections. If we don’t have in-world consistency until after molten core is on farm we’re not getting what we were promised.
Simply clinging to “layering will end by the end of phase 1” isn’t enough. Phase 1 is the most important part of this entire project. We were all so elated and relieved when blizzard announced they would be recreating the classic WoW experience, but that is not what we are getting.
EDIT: i’d also like to add: Having 10+ layers per server at launch means you are fighting against 10x as many people to get your name and that 90% of the taken player names will be unused yet unusable at the end of phase 1. How is this any different than having a shared name pool across 10 different servers designated for merging?
They could still easily open up a few more servers and have fewer layers per server. Or adjust layering to eliminate certain very obvious exploits it allows for.
This is precisely correct. “Collapsing” 10 layers at the end of Phase 1, from the COMMUNITY point of view, will be no different from merging 10 servers - suddenly 90% of the players you see you will have never met before.
This is in total contrast with actual Vanilla servers where you formed player connections while levelling up, which continued onto end game, as well as develop cross-faction rivalries.
Whereas now following the “layer collapse” essentially it will feel like starting on a brand new merged server again.
As someone above said, it’s releasing in 2 weeks, it’s done and no amount of complaining is going to change that.
Also, there’s no way in hell MC is going to be on farm status by the end of phase 1 except for the most elitist of hard core raiding guilds, guilds which if past experience is anything to gauge by, don’t give a flying F about the the community or establishing connections.
Layering is being removed once an accurate player base figure can be worked out, at which point Blizzard will likely adjust the number of servers ( up OR down ) and offer free realm transfers accordingly.
Personally I think the TEMPORARY layering is actually the best fix to the problem. If they had 20 servers for each region and realm type, you’re fracturing the player base from day zero, which has worse impact in both the short and long term.
This is exactly my problem. Layering doesn’t seem to be any different than server merging at the end of phase 1, except for the long list of other problems it introduces that aren’t present with server merging.
The only difference is server merging causes problems with player names being taken. However with layering it’s as if you’re sharing available player names with 9 other servers worth of people you can’t interact with, I don’t see how a few servers sharing the same name pool would be any different.
Between layering and continuing to allow streamers, it really does seem like they are setting up a self-fulfilling prophecy of, “you think it’s what you want, but it’s not.”
oh… yikes…thats going to exist? i was about to buy a sub JUST to reserve my 2 names but if thats how its gonna be I feel pretty confident i dont even want to play the game because at that point I feel pretty confident that since im mega antisocial and wont be reaching out to people, i’m basically never going to get anyone that recognizes me and says something…
like…phasing/layering is THE reason I quit WoW very long ago in the first place, and don’t play MMOs in general anymore… ill be an active part of the “server” but even when inevitably play 12+ hours a day nobody will ever know i exist
i play an MMO because im already lonely and want to make friends or people to recognize me… ill never find a place i belong…
Hmmmm, I think you missed the other issues involving with “merging” servers, such as who get’s to keep their character name(s) if others are using that same name on a server that is getting merged?
Except with layering you are already sharing a name pool with 10x the regular amount of players on the server, 90% of whom you will never see. As crazy as it sounds, having less layering and making a few servers designated for later merging share the same name pool would effectively be no different.
While the idea of having a shared name pool for individual servers does seem like a possible solution, it still ignores the fact that you’d have a completely split player base from day zero, and the game releases in 2 weeks.
That brings issues within a month, as server pops drop and everyone starts making toons on the most populated server because their original server choice is now a wasteland.
Don’t get me wrong, i’m not advocating layering, I just think it’s the best solution out of a set of bad solutions. There is no easy fix for player numbers, you’ll either have layering so you can gauge players and then make the appropiate changes ( ie: extra servers / merging servers ) or you’re going to have a section of player who end up on dead servers extremely early in the phases.
suddenly, having only, what is, it, 27 realms worldwide? makes more sense
they, assuming that every server has 10 layers, are prepared for 90% of people to quit the game after the game’s release, and to initially have, say, 1,620,000 players worldwide at the game’s first peak
every server can support 60,000 subscribers with 10 layers, until the layers go away, at which point the servers will only support maybe 6,000 subscribers, assuming that half of the subscribers won’t be online while the other half is online
they, assuming that there’ll be 10 layers per server at release, are assuming that there’ll be a 10% player retention rate
that actually somewhat goes along with what I’d heard some time ago about the vast majority of new subscribers quitting the game before reaching level 10, though it wasn’t quite that bad; iirc a 15% or 20% player retention rate
Layering is 100% sharding & we’re all being lied to.
Starting classic with it is extremely disappointing and kills a significant amount of excitement for the game. If layering stays beyond two weeks of release, it will 100% be sabotaging the games longevity and potential.
Yeah overcrowded launch day servers aren’t fun, but we all deal with it together and those painful memories are shared fondly in the future.
With layering, people will appreciate it for the first 10 noob levels but beyond that everyone will be watering down their experiences by being robbed of genuine interactions with other players. They will catch the gloomy single player retail vibe and that individual player’s classic experience will be tainted.
The world that classic promises us is completely being compromised by layering. The epitome of sabotage. I wouldn’t expect anything less from this sorry excuse of decision makers running blizzard nowadays.
We don’t know the actual number of layers they are using, so not sure where your 10x is coming from and again, I feel it is a bit of an overreaction, even though I do understand the concerns layering can potentially bring.
Wait and see how much more dialed in they get at release and see how it works out. In my mind, I would rather have more opportunities playing then sitting in queue for hours on end, which was the main reason why they wanted to go with this layering in the first place.
Nothing is perfect, they made some choices they felt were best for the companies needs and honestly probably not knowing what to actually expect at launch.
