No, we can only assume that reducing layers will allow more people on the map than it was originally designed for.
show me those exact words.
I understand that this is theoretically possible, but we have been told time and time again that layering was the best course of action to provide an authentic experience…AKA…2500 player worlds. If blizzard wanted to give us a 10k server cap, they would have done it from the beginning.
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That doesn’t imply that max population is increased under layering. It only suggests that they would have needed more realms to satisfy demand in the starter zones.
No company is going to do that. It would frustrate players and ruin the game. They will reduce realm population once layers are gone. That doesn’t necessarily mean down to 2500 players (the old guesstimate realm cap) but let’s say 3500 as an arbitrary number. You cannot have 10,000 players on a map designed for 2500ish without making very significant game changes.
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https://www.forbes.com/sites/hnewman/2019/08/26/warcraft-classic-layering-and-realm-queues-ion-hazzikostas-explains-why-youre-waiting-to-log-in/#76287ede7e45
We are trying to manage long term healthy populations on these servers around a unique sort of game launch. There’s no box that you have to buy on a shelf in a retail store for an outlay of dollars. We are opening this world up to millions of people, many of whom are just going to want to check it out as a matter of curiosity.
There are others who’ve been waiting for this clearly for years and they are in, as in as can be, but they’re all going to be there contending for the same server space on day one.
We are fairly sure — we can’t know for sure without being fortune tellers, but most of them align — there will be a fairly steep drop off compared to that day one interest, and we want to make sure because of how important community is in Classic in particular, that we have healthy server populations.
That’s why we’re not jumping to, hey, let’s just open up dozens and dozens of servers. We have the ability to do that. This isn’t about limiting costs or available hardware or anything like that. We could do that easily if we wanted to, actually much more easily than having complicated tech like layering.
But where we would that leave us down the line is with underpopulated servers that we have to start looking at merging or offering transfers from them to other servers to get back down in population. That’s tremendously disruptive to communities and something we really, really, really want to avoid.
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There is so much wrong in this post I can’t even begin…
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I followed all the discussions since day one. Yes, you are mistaken about layering not raising the population cap.
It’s not only the people at starting areas that was the concern. Blizzard was very worried about the “tourist” effect. They expected (or still expect) that a high percentage of the players would/will stop playing soon.
I read on some topic in MMO-champion that 15000 seems to be the maximum number of players (tested in EU). If true, they are expecting a 60 to 75% dropoff.
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That doesn’t imply that the server cap will go down after layering is done. They’re likely saying that because of zone overcrowding.
Blizz is assuming they are correct that “You think you want that, but you don’t” and that after an initial boost in population the crowds will drop. So they implemented layering as a temporary fix. When the tourists quit or go back to Retail the layers will be removed.
Ok. You’re right in that aspect, but I don’t think in the way you’re thinking. I’m actually reading that exact same article right now and was about to post it to defend my position that the population of individual layers does not affect the size of a queue.
What I’ve been trying to convey this whole time is that the queue is dependent on the overall size of the realm, not the size of layers within that realm.
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But how does this affect queues? Because that’s my gripe with this view, and what I’m trying to explain is incorrect. The size of a layer does not affect the size of the queue. The only thing affecting the queue is the size of the realm.
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I think there’s a miscommunication here. Nobody is saying that a single layer can’t handle 10,000 players at once. The technology is there. What we’re saying is that the realm cap would be forced down (by a Blizzard actively lowering it) so that the map, spawners, and nodes can handle the players. In the absence of lowering realm cap, they’d have to make significant changes to spawn timers across the board.
Now you are distorting.
OP said: remove layering. He didn’t ask for smaller layers.
If there are 15000 players and realms are suddenly gone, excess players will have to go somewhere.
You’re 100% right in this. But that was not stated in the OP. My issue with the OP is that reducing layers will increase queues, which it will not.
If blizzard were to reduce the pop cap of the entire realm, that would certainly increase queue times.
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Don’t bother. Some people just refuse to accept the truth and just want to argue irrelevant points.
I’m not distorting anything. OP said removing layers will increase queues, which is not the case.
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I get what you’re saying, and to that extent you’re right. I think we all know how taking off layering would impact the game though. They’d be forced to either go the undesirable route of messing with spawners, without the foresight to know the impact, OR they’d be forced to lower realm caps which is much more predictable.
Any game developer will take the path of least resistance every time. So queues would increase, not by limits in technology, but by human nature is making decisions.
The only thing that will achieve is a bunch of players quitting because they can’t play with their friends without a queue that stretches from Anaheim to Albuquerque.
If the goal is to get more people to transfer, do these two things:
- Offer a quantity-limited incentive of some kind for transferring
- Make it easier to transfer entire guilds
Does ANYONE in this thread have a Blizzard source for this information?
Because if not, you folks are just jerking each other off about nothing.