Layer Hopping now has Internal Cooldown

[Liq-lethon]

You are my kind of people!

I will gank an alliance at the character creation screen if I could. Heck, I would gank them while typing in their paypal password to buy a sub.

[Eloraell-moon-guard]

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that people who are willing to pay for a product would tend to be more invested in it that people who are just given it for “free”.

Uh, I’m going to be paying for the product. I already am supporting its development. The latest patch has confirmed that once I get flying (assuming its before August) I won’t be returning there and I’ll burn all my gold reserves for free Classic game time, before paying for it like a regular customer.

[Pwnsdruid-burning-blade]

I got him to delete it man, its cool

[Bricklethumb-anvilmar]

I do love you all! <3

[Switzy-stormreaver (Switzy)]

I don’t know why you care about this, but:

Layering system ideas

Alternate solution: You choose the layer on character creation The layers are static, no swapping between them Towards the end of phase 1, they merge like we’ve been promised This avoids the sharding/CRZ aspects of layering and allows for layer merges later.

A possible fix for layering?!

Once again, the solution is static layers. You pick a layer (Darkspear-1, Darkspear-2, Darkspear-3) on character creation and it functions exactly like a server. You can’t swap layers and the system won’t ever place you in another layer. This removes the CRZ/sharding aspects of layering and ALL of the exploits while keeping the option to merge layers intact.

The Layering Scandal

Solution 1: Layers are static. No layer swapping, either automatic or manual. This removes the CRZ/Sharding aspects of layering, while still keeping the ability to merge. Solution 2: More servers, and allow for free transfers from low pop servers. Solution 3: Extremely limited sharding in starting zones and days long, not weeks or months. Layering is far more detrimental than the sharding Blizzard originally mentioned; layering lasts much longer than what sharding was supposed to last, whi…

I had the more fun today In classic than I have had in retail

Aren’t we supposed to be assigned to a layer, as in layers being minirealms within a realm? So that when I log in, I am in the same layer no matter what? Nope. You switch layers on login, continent transition, grouping, and sometimes randomly (may be a bug). I’d kill for layering to be as static as what you described. That would remove the sharding/CRZ elements of layering and then I’d be 100% on board with layering.

Being prompted for Shard/Layer change

This is the proper solution. It strips out the sharding/CRZ aspects of layering while keeping the primary purpose of layering intact, merging populations after an anticipated population decline.

I’ve asked for static layers many times, and we’ve fleshed out the nature of static layers in thread after thread. It is my preferred solution since it maintains authentic vanilla server-like layers while allowing for merges like current layering.

[Dakotå-darkspear]

This sound better
Having a 30 min CD i think is fair

[Fesz-cenarius]

We have no idea how long it’s going to be in place

Except that Ion literally promised on video, to remove it within the first few weeks…

It’s nice that you believe everything they say.

But IMO their history causes me to take everything they say with a large measure of salt.

You can say they’re lying, but we do have an idea on how long its going to be in place.

More accurately, we have an idea of how long they currently say it will be in place.

How long it actually is in place remains to be seen.

I wonder if those who swear layering will be gone in “a few weeks” will be here admitting that they were wrong if layering extend more than 6 weeks or until phase 2 is released, possibly even beyond the release of phase 2 if the population does not drop as much as they think/hope it will.

[Pwnsdruid-burning-blade]

Layering is going to be in for all of Phase 1. However, the effects of layering will be tuned over time to where the player cap per layer will increase which results in less layers over time. Once phase 2 hits, layering will be gone. If there happens to be an excess amount of players on a server, the result at that point will be queues and possibly even free server transfers to potentially even fresh servers. They just want to make sure that people have an enjoyable experience with the initial rush.

[Fesz-cenarius]

I hope you are correct. I will ask you, though, why use layering for phase 1 to avoid queues only to instate queues in phase 2 if the population does not drastically drop?

[Pwnsdruid-burning-blade]

The queues that would be around at the launch of Classic would be larger than those that would come by phase 2. At the same time by implementing layers, they can avoid issues where a large amount of people in a small vicinity do not overload the server with processing actions as has been seen on the Beta. The affects are just more present at the beginning. The long term affect of layer is preventing server merges when there is a high drop off rate in specific servers. Thus they will use more limited amount of servers at launch.

[Balanor-maelstrom (Balanor)]

From how it is explained (and what I understand), we will be using layering and queues at launch. Expectation is that even with layers the servers will have a limit of how many people they want in them (thus a sort of soft cap on how many layers there may be). They want layers to temporarily stretch to accommodate an initial rush, but it would be an issue if too many people clumped onto one server. By the nature of how people like to flock to already high/full servers, if you don’t even put in a queue and rely solely on layers, that problem could become even worse. Then when layers get removed, queues on a few servers could be even worse than launch, not because more people stayed overall, but those who did clamored onto a few servers that ran ahead in population early.

[Katerina-mannoroth]

Layering is not a good solution, for all the myriad reasons above.

Layering a good solution given the constraints that Classic has to work in. It isn’t great or even best, in terms of game design in general; except for that whole “operating within the constraints of Classic” to contend with again.

But so far it is the likely launch scenarios go, it is a very good and simple solution for most of the ones likely to play out.

Layering has no business in any MMO at any time

That’s highly debatable. But also outside the scope of this forum.

Blizzard is causing a large chunk of this overpopulation at startup by not having a separate sub for classic. Retailers who will get the game for free are going to be the biggest group of tourists. Separate subs would cut down on the populations on launch day and alleviate a lot of this.

I doubt that. I suspect the BFA players are going to only a small fraction of the number of players/“tourists” that turn up. However, once those “tourists” try classic and decide they hate it, they could very easily decide to log in to BFA and check it out before their subscription dies.

[Kurwen-stonemaul]

It’s not about the rush. It’s about the drop off and 50% of the servers being dead after. Unless you want them to stay lean on realms and remove layering but the. You’d have a large group of people unable to log in because once people get in they’d do whatever they could to avoid logging out.

[Slientknight-blackrock (Slientknight)]

The fix to Layer Hopping has been implemented. Players get layer locked via an internal cooldown on layer hopping. Testers on the beta have picked up on this.

I think we will be paying blizzard enough that they can figure out what to do with extra servers after the merges.

I’m more concerned about having Vanilla wow back and intact than I am about blizzard having extra servers to hock. Maybe they can sell their old ones or givem to charity for tax benefits or something.

[Slientknight-blackrock (Slientknight)]

Why should blizzard having extra servers if population declines be pushed off as a players problem and alter the game anyways?

[Pwnsdruid-burning-blade]

Not sure exactly what you are referring to. But if you are talking about a hard server merge, then that’s a no go. You will get your authentic servers back by phase 2. If Blizzard is dumb enough to say “We are gonna keep layering into phase 2” then I will be with you an leave the game pretty much.

[Bricklethumb-anvilmar]

I’m more concerned about having Vanilla wow back and intact than I am about blizzard having extra servers to hock. Maybe they can sell their old ones or givem to charity for tax benefits or something.

These are not individual hardware servers. They are VM’s that spin up or down depending on need.

[Katerina-mannoroth]

I hope you are correct. I will ask you, though, why use layering for phase 1 to avoid queues only to instate queues in phase 2 if the population does not drastically drop?

Then their predictions and models based on historical player activity were wrong.

The goal is make sure realms are populated. If they’re overpopulated after the expected population collapse, then it was mission successful.

The layering isn’t so much about avoiding queues(although it has that impact), as it is about making sure that when the 70+% quit rate hits, there still is a population to work with on that realm.

[Pwnsdruid-burning-blade]

The layering isn’t so much about avoiding queues(although it has that impact), as it is about making sure that when the 70+% quit rate hits, there still is a population to work with on that realm.

That of course is based on the long term solution they were seeking. There are just some advantages that they can apply in the short term as well to encourage more people to play. More often than not, those unfamiliar with a game or anything business related will make a judgement within the first 40 seconds of a given experience.

[Gwendall-cenarion-circle (Gwendall)]

Personally, I think 15 minutes would be a solid number.

No 15 would be WAY to short… It should be at least an hour… Perhaps using a layer hop should use your hearthstone…

But seriously 15 min solves very little.