So, I’ve leveled to 44. I’m about to log in after this post and continue my adventures with my leveling party.
Before I do that, I want to say two things:
1.) You guys were right. I don’t like the layering. I’m not apoplectic or indulging in conspiracy theories over it, but I don’t like it. I get that it was necessary in week 1, but it isn’t anymore. I want it gone.
2.) I was sitting in IF last night, just looking at the population there that is larger this week than last (totally normal as the server progresses). I was smiling and enjoying myself as the various mounted toons and level 14 gnomes ran by on the way to whatever they were doing as I crafted bags and sent mail.
It hit me: I’m only seeing 1/2 to 1/3 of these lovely people. Our server is relatively small and can’t have more than 2 or 3 layers total. So why can’t we be squished right now? Why can’t this nice little no-queue server have its entire community together? I mean, we all fit. It’s nice and full but not overcrowded–and some of the less popular zones and capitals feel almost empty.
I want to see them all. I want to know who else is here. I want my Smolderweb community visible to me at all times.
I don’t like the layering. You guys were right.
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I’m glad to see that you can see how bad layering is.
Layering is a cancer on Classic, and it needs to go!
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You wanted it there in the first place?
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Hey, can someone educate the ignorant Alliance gal and tell me what the hee-ho heck “layering” is?
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How do you know exactly how many people are being layered. You say it’s bad and a cancer. I say 300 people shoved into Arathi Highlands trying to quest and crashing the zone is a cancer. The situation right now is that we don’t know the full benefit of layering because we don’t know how many different layers there are.
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I’m not sure if its a layering issue, or if this even pertaining to this discussion, but I was in a mine, there were four people in that mine with me, next thing they disappeared, and the entire mine was filled with those boulder rats. lol. I died four times trying to get out of there :o
I’m not a fan of layering though for some of these servers. I doubt mine was that high of a population at any time, its gonna be weird when stuffs removed. Everyone will have their people that they see all the time 
Are you only leveling in dungeons or something? Anyone questing through STV will attest that removing layering would result in a very bad experience. -Some zones are already a cancer experience even with layering. I’d give up and live in dungeons all day if they end up removing layering and I’m sure many others feel the same.
I’d love there to be dynamic layering from zone to zone but I don’t think that would ever be possible (because the game is practically 1 big zone).
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Arathi Highlands and STV are nightmares to quest or farm in right now because every spot is choked with people. Its already pretty disheartening to go to Arathi to try and farm for my Whirlwind Axe and nope, every circle is completely camped.
Layering is a net positive and your reasoning for getting rid of it is deeply flawed.
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Layering is necessary for now because vanilla wow was never meant to hold this many people on a single server. When you increase the maximum number of players on the server but make no other changes, you destroy the server. It’s easily understood if people are aware of what real vanilla was and not their private server lies.
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Ahhh, so it’s a workaround to deal with crowding issues. Hm. I guess I get it. I haven’t experienced any ill effects yet, myself, though. So I can’t speak on pros-and-cons.
Layering was always meant to be a temporary solution to a temporary problem, it’s not like people actually wanted it.
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Layering is making multiple instances of the game world for players to play on. Players on layer1 will see a game world, and players on layer2 will see a game world, and neither of those players will see or interact with each other.
The argument against it mainly rests in the vague “community” aspect people tend to through around when they talk about classic. But even on my relatively dead new server that I moved to from a much higher pop server, there are a LOT of people around and I would notice no difference if there was the same amount on another layer I never saw.
The goal here is to limit the queue times and allow players to play the game. Vanilla servers basically had server caps of around 3k from the best estimates I can find. The game world was not designed to accomodate 3k players at once either, that was just the cap. So putting two, three, or sometimes five times the number of players onto the server over the original game’s cap has a MASSIVELY negative experience on the game.
And no, having to deal with overcrowded zones and forming lines to turn in quests was NOT the vanilla experience.
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The concern would be, what if this doesn’t remain a temporary problem? Blizzard is anticipating players leaving Classic, but what if not enough do?
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Well, servers like faeralina would crash every ten minutes without at least some layering, so… Iunno.
Well, not that you need to form lines. You can all just… clip through each other!
Crap like that is why I never play an MMO during expansion launch week.
It still is very necessary. There are times i go out to quest and then have to log off because too many people doing the same quest. I have no idea what server you are playing on that you can’t see it is necessary even in lvl 44 areas (yes I am 44 too).
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You get the same thing at times for the leatherworking mats for the specializations.
Layering has given players an easy way to exploit leveling, the economy, end game gearing, etc…
This should not be a shock to anyone. We knew this was going to be a problem. The question comes down to whether QoL is more important than a balanced playing field.
I’m on the side of balance. Layering is bad for the game.
People saying that zones would be unplayable without layering are right to a point but:
- this is only because Blizzard has allowed maximum server pops to balloon to ridiculous levels, way beyond what we had in Vanilla. I’m continually amazed at the silence on this particular point as it’s about as far from #nochanges as they could get without implementing CRZ. How do people think vanilla-esque communities are going to be created when there’s 3-4 times the players, at least half of whom you can’t see at any one time?
- this is presenting a muddied picture of server balance to players because as far as I’m aware, no faction balancing occurs when putting players onto new layers.
- the natural balancing that occurs when there’s no CRZ/phasing/layering etc that forces people into other parts of the world and on to different activities is not happening as it should.
It’s going to be interesting to see what happens come phase 2 on servers if the population hasn’t dropped to near vanilla server levels. Either way, it’s too late to do anything now unless they force server changes on people.
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I have never liked CRZ or any other form of it. I rolled on a lower population server because when I try to quest I don’t want a dozen other players fighting over quest npcs.