Layering is garbage

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
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Layering is the reason 99% of our current problems exist.

There’s no Rp-PvP server or any other server because one server with 6 layers with 20k people on each > a small server with 1-2k on max (and which was still perfectly fine finding groups on).

Want to host a rp/pvp event? Good luck managing it through all the layers.

Your farming spot is overrun? Just swap layers, oh wait that layer is full too lol jk

Oh and you can’t even swap layers willy nilly now they have cooldowns anyway.

Lets not forget the random times you’ve found yourself forced onto another layer, sometimes when I was in the middle of killing a mob.

Please stop this nonsense and return us to original servers with only one layer

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It’s the biggest reason Classic 2 < Classic.

Layering is bad for communities, but easy for Blizzard. There’s also the huge segment of single player MMO enjoyers who don’t care about community at all and love how “dead” servers aren’t possible with megaservers.

I unfortunately don’t see them ever doing individual servers ever again, as awful as they are. Seeing “buying inv to layer1” just makes me sad.

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Maybe when quantum takes off we’ll see MMOs which can support the entire human population in one area simultaneously.

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agreed with op, the layers are unplayable. prob gonna let my sub lapse until they change it, or just play era

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I can see layers as a necessary evil for a mega servers like ours. I was there in northshire when the server launched (within the first 5 minutes) and it was 5 people per spawn spot of wolves and kobolds. I had to cross the river and farm defias and then get out at level 4 because other people had the same idea.

However I can’t deny that I truly loathe layering. Open world, large scale, pvp events are ruined. Trying to get 4+ raid groups of alliance and horde to fight in hillsbrad was impossible. SW/IF looks sort of dead because the layering really disguises the scale of the community.

I can only hope that layering is all but gone in P2 when world bosses are released and/or when pvp ranks are unlocked. Fighting over world bosses is cool and added a lot of server drama back before 2019 classic. The top guilds on my server ended up negotiating on who got what and when after 2 weeks of boss racing and conflicts.

One of the reason players enjoy classic is that sense of community you get when you see somebody in the world multiple times. Whether you helped eachother on a quest, tagged a rare mob from you, or got ganked. People are spread out over many layers and this interaction is lacking. The game is becoming more anti-social and it really hurts to watch.

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They created the problem of mega servers in the first place and then put layering as a band aid to fix it which just made more problems.

Cap server sizes to 2500 like the 2004 game was and stop allowing server transfers and magically you won’t have mega servers anymore to need layering

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well that and dual speck :expressionless:

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With sod, then this, its pretty clear the classic team has no understanding of game design and just implement conveniences that people whine for on the forums

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This layer on top of layer on top of layer is ruining the world experience.

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Absolutely no one could have foreseen this.

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you wanted megaservers :expressionless: this is what you get
you chose this
you wished for it with the monkeys paw

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2500 players per server with no transfers? I don’t know about that…it worked when WoW’s player count skyrocketed for six straight years.

Now-a-days that could cause big population issues for a lot of servers as players come and go between Cata, Era, SoD, Hardcore and Anniversary.

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The population exploded, but so did the number of servers.

I don’t know why Blizz expected some big drop off on these progression servers. They could easily accommodate a couple. We’re not talking dozens. But having one of each is ridiculous.

And there’s ways to get players to go where you want. I spelled it out in another thread. But it’s never going to happen, so it doesn’t matter. Blizz likes megaservers because it’s the easiest and cheapest thing for them. It’s no more complex than that.

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People hate queues but there was a reason why they existed

It was so the largest servers wouldn’t crash with so many people (and in those days there was only one layer.)

But more importantly, it convinced people to roll on other servers. Much like how the faction-balancing system forces people to roll on the other faction if they aren’t too dedicated to one.

Note once again that it is only when layers were reenabled in tbc did we see numerous servers dying. Most survived all the way through vanilla. It could also partly be TBC’s racials causing a lot of Alliance people to go Horde that upset a lot of server’s faction balance, but that won’t be an issue anymore with the faction balancing tech.

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what up LDG…LONG LIVE CHAOSBOLT!..hopefully we get a rppvp server without dual spec/layers/sharding…Wishful thinking but seriously don’t ever see it happening. Hopefully in a few years maybe will get cata races/profs/classes but with only Vanilla content…Be my dream. Sub is up in 12 days and don’t plan on renewing…

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Unfortunately the players have created this problem and Blizzard, as much as I’d like to blame them, is only reacting to player demand.

Mega server culture emerged in 2019 Era. It was a player driven problem. They offered us dozens of realms the many players only wanted mega servers or bust.

We saw this culture continue in TBC and Wrath Classic, with few changes from blizzard. They were left to clean up the dead realms players left behind. Offering FCMs from these “dead realms” with THOUSANDS of players on them to the mega realms.

We saw it continue with SoM.

We saw it become more aggressive in SoD. Less realm choice, larger realms, and eventually, locking realms with again thousands of players and offering FCMs off to the mega realms. Effectively killing these servers off.

We saw them literally covert an RP PvP realm to PvP after they accepted this new reality. The streamers chose RP PvP with Crusader Strike and despite the RP community trying to consolidate there, it just didn’t feel very RP. Meanwhile you had Chaos Bolt (where I primarily was playing) which felt like the good old RP servers I’ve played on since 2004… it still had thousands of players and blizzard decided to lock new toon creation + offer migrations to the mega realms… killing it off.

Finally here we are with Anni. Two realms. No RP. Just infinitely scaling layers and two server types. Completely removing the concept of a realm away and killing off any community identity / realm identity that came with dozens of smaller, healthy realms.

On the flip side, blizzard doesn’t have to manage these servers. They can auto scale layers instead. Truth be told, realms are an artifact of fixed server size on physical machines. I can see why they’d remove them. I just think they overlooked how the game “feels” when you have many realms with their own identity. I won’t deny it though, it does remove the issue of “dead realms” that eventually happen… but back to my original point. That is a player created issue, where the players obsessed over mega realms. Called realms with THOUSANDS of active players “dead” because they couldn’t get a 4am Deadmines run going. Dead server.

Anyways, I don’t blame blizzard for this. They reacted to the players. Player meta culture, “dead server” memes,and mega server or bust mentality are to blame.

Bring back smaller low pop realms :slight_smile:

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really miss the old layering

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Connunity doesn’t matter to Blizzard anymore.
Look at the state of the forums.

They haven’t even bothered creating Realm forums for the Anni servers yet.

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These layers suck

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Mega servers weren’t player driven, they were created by blizzard when blizzard didn’t add the faction balancing feature the original 2004 game had and when blizzard allowed server transfers the original 2004 game didn’t have.

A lot of people seem to forget in 2004-2006 you couldn’t make an alliance and a horde character on the same server and you couldn’t make new characters on a server if the faction balance was more than 45/55% unless you were joining the lower population faction. We didn’t have these issues 20 years ago.

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