I’m glad Blizz are answering some questions, but it doesn’t make me feel any better about Layering- it will help with early congestion, great, but I still won’t be able to see my un-partied friend in the game world.
I sincerely hope Blizzard remove sharding altogether from Classic WoW as soon as possible.
Yea. I’m rolling Grobb and hoping this whole layering/que mess bypasses the server.
Idk though. What I’m getting out of what I’ve read is that it’s getting shut off and if your server is overloaded people might want to change serverd.
Either way im just glad they’re shooting for it to be gone before world bosses. The wpvp carnage is going to be glorious!
He doesn’t say anything about overpopulated layers. How inviting to them will work? If phasing happens exclusively on invites this means all the players on the server can gather on one single layer. So there is something missing in that explanation.
They said in the AMA that layer assignment happens at log in too. So as soon as one layer gets full, all players logging in after that point can be sent to a lower pop layer, presumably.
I’m talking about invites to a capped layer. The two only possible outcomes - all players on the server being able to gather on 1 layer or people are phased out to compensate.
The layer “cap” probably isn’t hard and fast. Enough people will be logging out often enough to quickly give more room.
You think they will rely on “lets hope enough people will log off”? Will that hope work if players decide to game the layering system?
What about the case when cool wpvp happens on layer X and everyone start asking for invites on that layer?
That response is intentionally explaining only the bright side of the story.
I’m speculating about how the back side of the system works, but I’m not sure what you’re worried about. People won’t be bumped out of a layer randomly given the AMA answer:
So how they handle a coordinated Hillsbrad raid or what constitutes an overpopulated area, I don’t know. Their answers about layering bug fixes indicate that they’ve thought about the implementation a lot.
Your opinion is that they choose to not have invite based population cap on layers?
My opinion is that inviting someone to your party when you are in a full layer will not kick someone else out suddenly, based on the AMA explanation. My suspicion is that they will stop people from coming into the layer through other means, like auto-assignment when logging in, and the attrition as people log out in other parts of the world will more than make up for party invites in one busy area.
I think I understand what’s going to happen.
Once layering is removed, the realm cap will drop dramatically to what they believe a single realm layer can support. Prior to phase 2, Blizzard will probably allow free, but heavily regulated transfers to low pop, or maybe even new servers. They’ll issue a similar warning to what they did for Herod - transfer or stare at even longer queues than what you had with layering.
You heard of a stat squish? Well, phase 2 will bring a population squish.
At least that what it sounds like to me.
They stated that it won’t always be the player being invited that changes layers. So if the person inviting is in a full layer, he will probably get moved instead.
They specifically said the transfer goes to the inviter’s layer:
That was the case in vanilla too. Sure, you could see the same people but doesn’t mean you will. With layering, seeing the same people IS still possible.
Yep, I read that wrong. For some reason I read shouldn’t.
Thanks for sharing what Blizzard said. They seem to be on top of it, and I think they’ve got a good system so far.
My only concern is how they will be able to reduce to a single layer by phase 2. If layering is going to mask the reality of overpopulation, prevent the need for queues, and make the experience smooth for everyone, the downside is that no one will have an incentive to ever leave.
Assuming that the big servers still have extremely high populations by that time, how will they incentivize players to [freely] transfer to other servers and spread out, if their experience isn’t negative? The only way I can see, would be to have queues from the beginning, but keep them at a point where they’re not crazy, but not totally convenient either. That way, players will always feel some degree of inconvenience until phase 2, and that will encourage them to transfer when the time comes to reduce to a single layer.
More like the first few months. They’ve already moved the goals again from “the first few weeks” to “before phase 2”. We’ll see if they move them again once phase 2 rolls around and the populations are still too high.
You wouldn’t see them if they were stuck in queue either. And you wouldn’t see ANYONE if you are the one stuck in queue.
How I understand it is when you log in, you’ll be put in your layer (if layering is needed at that time) and you won’t move out of that layer unless you group with someone who happens to be in a different layer.
I see it as “once you’re already in a layer, your impact on the world has been managed. new people logging in won’t have an effect on your layer; as the population fills another layer would kick in for even more people logging in, but your layer is still your layer”.
I do wonder, though…if two layers suddenly have a drop in population (i don’t know, maybe an earthquake or something kills access for a large number of people) would those layers be reduced to 1 layer?
I suppose it doesn’t really matter after phase 1, anyways.
I like that the Blizz devs see sharding as a problem that is detrimental to Classic WoW.
I dislike that sharding is being implemented at all. I feel with all the billions of dollars of resources available to Activision Blizzard, an alternative solution surely must have been available.
So I’ll wait until sharding is gone before playing. The upside to this is, provided sharding actually is eliminated, I’ll be able to choose the most populated servers after the initial rush.