Connected realms were just a fancy name for server mergers. And they were permanent, you weren’t merged with X realm today and Y realm tomorrow.
Lol how? They should have left realms dead /imbalanced?
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Smashing fully formed communities together. There was never a real amalgamation of the community, because of those surnames over people’s heads. (Well (*) but you know)
impossible to have a community with a dead server /faction though.
Dunno, just do not agree as you need people to have a community.
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As far as I can tell, layering is basically connected realms, just that all the realms have the same name.
And since they all have the same name you don’t need to go to a default shard and they don’t need to keep a default shard for that Layer/Realm running. Any shard with space will do.
And this way a realm could have anywhere from 2000 active players to millions and always look just as populated.
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yah it kind of is, I mean I think all this tech is based on the same stuff.
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Yeah - tell me about it. My server never got merged and also was very unbalanced by the time mergers were going on. After the mergers stopped, my realm got deader and deader. I’m not even sure if we’re more balanced now since a lot of Alliance left for busier servers. On Horde we only have a few major guilds left.
I kind of wanted to get merged and kind of didn’t. Both options have bad sides.
Kind of a long shot that Blizzard would develop a new server technology just for classic. Sharding is probably very foundational to their current server tech so most likely removing it isn’t a realistic option.
But the players don’t like it, so rename it and use it as test bed for the next evolution of the technology, turning connected realms into mega servers.
And if the cost savings is greater than the money they make from server transfers, coming to retail WoW near you.
from one of the devs interviews, layering is something they developed for Classic.
They quite simply do not want to repeat the server failures Classic Launch and Classic had at times, people would riot just the same if the servers melted without them doing anything at all.
And if layering is just a modified version of sharding, that’s still a true statement.
Cool we can both be right then:O)
And if you really don’t like the tech you all need to stop calling it “layering”
Call it modified sharding , classic sharding or something sharding.
Renaming it is how they’re sneaking it under the radar. Even if it is a completely new technology it’s functional results are the same and calling it by the old name will pressure them to address that fact.
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And a unified namespace, but the inability to see everyone around you.
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But we get a single chat and a single AH.
When folks yell out that Horde is invading Goldshire if you are not in that layer you won’t see anything when you get there.
And then you’ll spend your time spamming chat hoping for someone in that layer to invite you.
Then too many people get into that layer via raid invites and then what happens ? Crash ?
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Not necessarily something that will remain only in Classic though. It is actually not a bad concept for replacing sharding in Retail to remove some of the complaints of phase shifting players…
Yah i know, sounds like it would be perfect for what people complain about in CUrrent.
I just want the servers to stay up and not melt,lol.
That’s about it.
I doubt this…
But if they’re thinking out of the box the big technical hurdle for mega servers would be analyzing all your people connections and trying to keep the same friends and guild networks on the same shards so you do see the same people day after day. And then add some process like disk defragging to slowly and transparently move people around to keep them with their current and emerging friend networks.
If all the new layer/realms are always squished to full, and you continually see a lot of the same people, cross layer/realm find people tools wont be needed as much and some of that community feeling might come back.
But I think the cost savings of mega servers would need to be greater than the profits from server transfers before they would invest in that.
ESO uses megaserver technology.
I don’t know how it works but the game plays flawlessly when it comes to that.
Nothing disappears/reappears.
I don’t have to worry about any “dead servers”…I log into the single NA server.
The game is alive with players in all zones.
When someone yells out a zone boss is up I can go there and see it without having to group up.
If I had to guess the layer/sharding is a lot less porous and you kind of do have a default layer you’re assigned to based on your friend network and your normal logged on patterns.
In that case every layer could have a world boss and be mostly shielded from the other layers. Kind of like being able log in to any realm/layer you feel like but when you do you don’t see the other layers. But since the layers are kept full, the world feels complete with out the X realm functionality.
Does not mean most or any of those players would stay. Nostalruis had huge number start playing but that dwindled down to that 75k or so.