So… battlegroups?
i guess? my idea is do what the op said but add the questionnaire i mentioned below, and let the system balance load and population from those players who just want to play and dont particularly care what server as long as its either pvp or normal
Look, if layering is temporary, then this doesn’t matter.
If it’s permanent, then it basically amounts to having super realms.
Either way, your idea is just bad from a technical standpoint.
So you’d just have ghost town layers instead. If they’re going to function exactly like realms, why even try to maintain the pretense that they’re different?
Your solution is basically realm merges, except don’t call them realms, call them layers. Granted, I don’t really mind that.
Have a group of realms you know will be merged together eventually. Share name reservations between those servers. Easy.
2 Likes
with the quick creation idea i mentioned, new players that selected quick creation, would be placed on low pop layers, resolving the issue of low pop.
once you show the player the server list, they start selecting based on things like… .oh what a cool name or my favorite lore character or my dog is named that, or look how popular/unpopular that server is. but if you ask first and can get them to select quick create, you bypass that whole issue
merging realms is a dirty word because people do not like it, because its a massive disruption to economy and community.
hence your solution is to replace dynamic layers, which possibly can be abused to negligible harm to the server and minimal disruption to immersion, with massive disruption to economy and community…
I think layering is the better solution.
Why on Earth would they hire you after you post that?
They’ve been…uh, already thinking of exactly that.
they are going to merge them at the end of phase 1. its happening . and if a layer still has too many people, ion says it’ll be pulled out and made into its own server. same problem. the op’s solution is better, and then just add my quick create vs. manual selection idea to resolve population imbalance.
They are dynamic and merge as necessary except they do not have distinct economies that are all gonna get thrown together causing massive disruption.
Also that IF a layer has too many people is a BIG IF… the drop off is gonna be huge.
The OP’s solution is worse in pretty much every way which is why it has been thought of and discarded in favor of better solutions.
who said their economies couldnt be shared? all the mannoroths would share the same economy and name database so they could merge later, which is whats gonna happen anyway.
1 Like
ive read this idea a lot, do it blizz.
2 Likes
I can get behind this. 
It’s really similar to the one i suggested earlier too. It still gives them extra leeway to manage the servers. If the groups share the name pool, they can even say for PR reasons there’s no merges going on here, these realms already were connected through sharing names! LOL! PR drama btfo.
Here’s the idea i posted earlier in another thread, just to add to the pile:
1 Like
You literally just pitched crossrealm as an alternative to layering.
Lmao
Imagine being stuck in a dead layer for 1 month.
No horrible idea.
Its not anny different from having seperate realms and then merging realms together.
It’s not crossrealm. They’re all their own realms, and nothing other than the name pool is what connects them, so that in case merges are needed very early on the names can be kept.
Considering the amount of excitement for Classic, and the fact it will be the MMORPG experience out there that no other game provides anymore, we’re likely not gonna have the issues of low pop realms, especially not in the first weeks and months.
1 Like
I’m all for pre-merged realm solutions. No, its not perfect. Yes, its better than what we see in beta.
1 Like
You’ll end up with having only those options you mentioned left the moment layering is taken out of the game.
After that, the whole rest of the game (2 years?~) relies on the usual methods again. The difference is, that during the period with high tourist inflation and potential drop off, having realms in groups that only share the name pool allows for swift merges early on if that is even going to be needed at all in case tourists are dropping off on some realms.
Because it’s early on, the community is much less impacted by such a merge (get to keep the name, haven’t played that long together yet but still take the same people with them over to the new realm).
Whereas with layering, there’s no actual server community formed at all during it’s whole stay since people keep getting interchanged throughout layers with thousands of people each.
The game people get to play is drastically different from the original from Day 1, as layering will invite a whole new approach to tackling the games world and challenges, which also is going to impact the whole social dynamics of the community in a way that’s not appropriate for what Classic is supposed to be (a faithful recreation of Vanillas game).
On the other hand, by using realm groups for example, you’d be able to play the real deal of Classic from the start, and only have a small chance that you’d even end up with having to realm merge.
And even if you do somehow, and players drop Classic left and right (…nah), the merge will be early on reducing the impact on the community, and you even get to keep your names too, making sure your reputation with “your people” from your previous realm you met during leveling is kept intact as you make yourself at home on a new realm and band together with the other community.
Yeah, i’d take that over layering anyday.
2 Likes
Your sloution is poor and has been suggested by other people. All you did was create a bunch of different servers then just merge them together when the servers population fell. The fact you named them the same thing doesnt make that any differet.
The idea that a community is formed then broken up as they are restitched together is clearly a problem. Not only is that a problem you still have the same issues of smaller shard having more opportunity to get materials without any competition at all for as long as your idea is in place.
Should you want to roll up sooner that just makes it that much more problematic as you just start one offing servers as opposed to doing it all at the same time.
I would add i dont think a week is enough time to solve population issues.
1 Like
Say that to Pservers with over 10k players on 1 server.
The whole point of layering is, to stay in a healthy pop while leveling.
If u make it like OP pointed out U will end up with unfair distributed populations over the layers. Besides u have 0 chance to meet some one untill they merge.
With normal layering u have alot more chance to meet those people before they merge, so u contradict yourself there.
resolution for dead layer ↓