Just call it what it is, it's sharding

Layering is more like CRZ than anything. CRZ matches you with randoms from other realms, ensuring that you rarely see the same player more than once in the world. Layering randomly places you on a layer on login, meaning you’re much less likely to see the same players in the world.

Boomers and zoomers, cute.

Thanks for the explanation!

Let’s take an example - you get a message saying Cross Roads is under attack. You run over and see nothing. Next step is to find a friend that happens to be in that shard, and get an invite to join? Sort of kills the immersion - no?

If they are going to have this system, the solution is to not allow cross-shard communication and to limit the jump to one per day.

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You spelled communication wrong.

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That’s a solution, better than people just whining.

And if we see what blizzard wants to achieve with this feature, and is a big IF. They ensure that every single server can have a healthy population of players once the people who wasn’t interested in vanilla leaves, because with layering they want to cram as much people as they can into one server and then once the population decresaes, merge all layers into one server.

If this is a success, then q times for bgs will be lower than what they were in vanilla when they decided to introduce cr bg, then we can argue that cr bg are not needed and maybe they could disable that feature that everybody hates.

Layering is literally sub-servers, It’s nothing like CRZ. They aren’t randoms… they are ALL going to be on your server once the daily activity normalises. If they did nothing… those “randoms” would be the guys sitting in the 1-5000 player queue waiting 4 hrs to play with any of their friends.

The main issue I see with it is resource hopping, but ideally there will only be 1-3 layers up at a given moment given that the devs have said that there is a “cap” on the amount of players that will be able to play on a layered realm (3 layers means approx 9k people are trying to actively play on a server). Having more stringent limitations on the transferring would be ideal (something like 4 hours to a day might be a good deterrent).

In the case of the X-roads attack scenario as mentioned above, if they changed it so that world messages are only broadcast within the layer then you wouldn’t even know it was happening unless your friend on that layer could see it. It would be kind of sad that you might miss out on such a PvP event, but the fact that you are on another layer either means that you or all those players should be sitting in a queue waiting for the chance to even log into the game.

In the end, I’m OK with “Layering” but there are some issues that need to be addressed if they want to minimise the damage.

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We need a blue post detailing what are their plans for layering and how it will work. I would like it if they make it so you can only loot quest items. Big no for gathering resources or looting rares/chests.

To my understanding, that’s not how it will work. You are talking about one massive mega-server, with no actual need for a realm other than by name. We will get realms, and there will be something like up to 3 or 4 layers to a realm max, with each layer capable of holding up to 3000 people. When the tourists leaves and logins becomes more spread out, and concurrent players over a period is vanilla cap like, they will collapse the layers to one single realm. That mean you will be on a realm with something like max 12k players on launch. You will encounter some of the same people during that time, and it sounded like they already had considered putting people on layers where their guild is (No evidence so far though)

That’s how I understand it.

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IMO it’s better not to waste time speculating on what layering/sharding/etc. will look like at launch. Video game companies are notorious for saying one thing and delivering another. Remember how they said sharding would work, compared to how they say it will work now? The original plan has already changed.

Maybe layering will be seamless and awesome, or maybe classic will be plagued by people not being able to see each other throughout its existence. We won’t know until the final build is released and everyone is playing it.

Until then, best to not get your hopes up. Remember every “Star Wars” movie that had an awesome trailer and ended up being mediocre. Hype is hype, nothing more.

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Depending on the maximum number of player per server I’d probably still prefer a que as opposed to layering; given the info we have currently. I think high pop could be just as damaging as low pop.

This is just speculation…

Guess we’ll find out on release, hope they address this layering issue in depth.

You will still get queues though. If 3100 people login to the same realm, it is not like they will make a separate layer for just 100 people.

Sharding and layering have all the same problems, and the most obvious and important problem they share is that they weren’t in vanilla.

Renaming sharding to layering will fool a lot of people. This thread is proof of that, but no matter the subtle differences between them, neither should be in Classic.

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yea, but that boat probably already sailed. Doesn’t matter at this point, how much we scream and yell. We all have opinions on how Blizzard should run their company, and to a large extent, they have given us what we want. I don’t mind giving them some slack if they deem it necessary to have a perfect launch and healthy realms going forward. On the other hand though, if it isn’t gone before phase 2, I’ll be right there venting and unsubbing.

Blizzard: We want to stress test the servers for population density.
Also Blizzard: We want layering in case of too many players.

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You need to know somethings breaking limit so you know how much reinforcement it needs. You realize jets dont actually need 4 engines to carry all that cargo right?

I think I’d rather take right-click report, layering for a month, and loot trading in a raid over dyanmic respawns, no regional locks, mafias, and corrupt producers any day.

Sharding/Layering isn’t going to help tell you that limit.

Thats why you do a baseline test. I wouldnt be surprised if the first stress test didnt have any layering at all. Or if it does the player limit would be based off of retail’s limits.

ahhhh okay, so layering doesn’t do x realm, it instances people on the same realm. I thought that’s what it was, but wanted clarification on it. Ty for that vid.

It was one of the questions asked by the streamers. BFA has a Nsquared problem on the networking side because of all the “extras” that have been layered on gear, abilities and enchantments. Classic doesn’t have that overhead, it shouldn’t be a problem. But then, that’s why you stress test, so you can verify it isn’t a problem.