And, this whole "don’t want a disaster at launch* perspective – well, if the queue is an hour long with no layering, I can go play retail if I don’t want to wait. It’s not like this is the only version of the game we can play with our sub.
No, if you want to ruin the point of the entire game, you can find another game to play.
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Have you found green jesus yet?
“Their version” is a private server version where things have been proven quite inconsistent with the actual 1.12…
Classic is Blizz’s “best reproduction” and must include some technology to accommodate a different gaming world. There will likely be more than 3 million players at launch… not 300,000… and that MUST require a different approach.
Listening to people whine about the smallest of issues is getting old. “I wanted French Vanilla, not Old Fashioned Vanilla, or Extra Creamy Vanilla.”
You are going to get what Blizzard can support. It’s not going to be perfect in every way. But it’s clear that they have brought the spirit of Vanilla back… and people are loving it.
Again… I ask you. If they launch Classic and you are stuck in 10 hours queues… are you going to THEN come online and say “I’m part of the community that brought it back… I should get preference in the queues. Let the posers wait.”
Or is it better to compromise a little and allow Blizzard to make a product they can support in today’s world?
That’s what I’ve been wondering. Some servers may still have a huge population when phase 1 is complete. I’m not convinced they won’t extend the layering system past phase 1 if the pop is still too high.
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I’m not part of the community that brought back vanilla. For the longest time, i had no idea how good it supposedly was, nor that there was a big demand for it, because i started playing in TBC. Which i now see is in many ways similar to Vanilla, but also not quite the same.
Most importantly though, i got to experience the game at a point where the community feeling was very strong and so was the immersion to the world, which made me a huge fan of WoW. I bought the game on the premise that it was a big open RPG fantasy world with other real players in it. And it completely overdelivered needless to say.
If the game back then was like BFA today, i would have quit very early on, regardless of such smooth launches as we have had the last xpacks. If i saw something instancing me out of the world and away from players around me like layering in Vanilla will, either by grouping or by layers adjusting the population, i would have quit as well. There are enough instanced games out there. Early WoW stood out from that.
I get what the Vanilla crowd is talking about when they speak of their amazing time in that game. And i feel it’s very important that this aspect is not compromised on because as you put it, there is a spirit of Vanilla, and whether it thrives or struggles depends on how well the community is supported to allow it thrive in the game. Layering is disrupting it for weeks or months in the hopes it will pay off later on by avoiding server mergers.
Systems like it have consistently since their implementation reduced the community aspect in later expansions to a shadow of it’s former self. The lovingly known and well intentioned systems like Sharding, CRZ, LFD, LFR, etc. which were supposed to fix issues, only ended up creating more of them.
Especially the first two are widely considered, even now, to be harmful to the game and peoples enjoyment of it. Layering is a system that evolved out of these already harmful ones, except it’s tailored to classic this time.
There is a clear track record here. The coming issues with layering are very predictable once you understand it, and already pop up visibly in the tests (i was there both times).
The alternative is to make use of their modern tech the best way the know and, as they’ve stated they can, open up servers very swiftly as demand requires. Will it cost them more? From what I’ve seen yes. Are some servers going to face issues later down the line? Probably, yeah. As you said, it can’t be perfect.
But you’re going to have server issues AND more the moment you realize once P1 is over, and you can’t take out layers due to overpopulation, meaning you may have to resort to server splits (which is what they want to avoid by using layering).
Which would mean layers were pointless all along, yet they stayed for weeks or months changing the game, and now you gotta figure a way out without having the classic community pissed as hell cause they endured it for the sake of a painless launch and assured stability down the line. In this very possible case it is not just gone, but the situation is actually going to be way worse than it could’ve been otherwise. The same thing could happen with underpopulation, but it’s less likely.
I’ll take the queue. I have been in them before, just like everyone else who played early WoW xpacks. If i choose a highly populated server i’m going to have a queue. And a big one at that. But the pain is over very soon everytime. You know, I’ve been in a raiding guild on a first highly populated, then dead realm before, trying to recruit. Trying to play my alts. Needless to say it sucked. Eventually my guild transferred off the server. Tough luck, things change. But! All the time i spent in the game, was exactly the game that i bought in the first place.
Overall the early WoW’s succeeded easily without any system besides a queue at launch. Once the storm was over, you were good to go. On very busy days, if you chose a high pop realm, you could face a normal queue. You chose your place, you handle it.
This time, we’d get queues, and on top of it have layering (another population control) being present in the game itself to regulate the population and drag the whole thing out for weeks or months. During that period, if you like the game, you’ll spend many many hours playing it in a way it’s not supposed to work. Only way after do you get the right version of it (that Blizzard recognizes as such). How is that worth it?
Believe it or not but i’m not the kind that visits the forum to complain about “small” stuff. I’m not crying either, i’m being constructive in all my posts. I haven’t used the forums for years to provide my own input until i saw what they plan to do with Classic, strafing from their own principles.
Don’t worry though, the chance they take out layering is very low at this point. If they confirm it 100%, i will wish them and the players the best luck and fasten my seatbelt because strong turbulence is on the radar. I will stick it out with them as i have before, but rest assured I’ll be actually crying inside as i missed out on the authentic start of classic, and i’ll shed additional inside tears for their loyal vanilla fanbase.
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One there will be more than a 50% decline easily…
Two its not just the decline its distribution.
When the game is released Most everyone is gonna wanna play right then. So you have all your players playing at the same time and they are all at the same locations.
After a few weeks even the people who want to keep playing are no longer gonna be playing for a majority of the day every day. They will fall back into there schedules and play a few hours at a time at various other times.
So if you have 1000 players who play 12 hours a the overlap is a LOT more than if you have that same 1000 players who are now playing 2 hours. Thats just 1 day… now when you split those 1000 players who only play 3-5 days a week that overlap becomes smaller still. Then you have the fact that players level at different speeds so they spread out over a much larger portion of the world.
All in all even without a decline in players you have a much lower stress after a short period. Then when you combine it with the MASSIVE player dropoff that WILL happen. layering is not gonna cause problems with its removal.
This shows you don’t understand layering.
On launch day, maybe there are say 5 layers, giving one server the capacity of 5 servers. When you log in, you get put into a layer. Sometimes layer 1, sometimes layer 5, its sort of random.
A month later, after the hype is over, the numbers have dropped and everyone is in the same layer.
It’s totally sensible.
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Of course it is. Less players, less layers. That’s proportional
I’m not sure which side you are on, but you use of the word “Tourist” really annoys me. Anyone who didn’t play Vanilla when it was current isn’t a lesser person or player. All of these “Tourists” made Classic possible, because without their subscription fees Blizzard wouldn’t have been able to justify bringing it back.
As far as bringing the Vanilla community back that has zero to do with layering. If the server is crowded like it was during the stress test there was no community to be had, because players were more interested in getting through the initial quests than making new friends. I tried talking to group members, but no one had the time or wanted to respond. None of them wanted to keep going after they finished the quest, too. If no one is competing for quest mobs people will be more likely to want to chat and layering is how it’s going to get done.
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I don’t think everyone will be able to play right when the game launches. Many people have jobs and other responsibilities. I don’t think anyone can predict with any kind of accuracy when the decline, if any, will occur and to what degree. The game could grow just like it did after launch or it could grow exponentially or it could drop 50% just like you said, but there’s no data to draw from to predict what will happen.
The issue I have with this type of comment is: that isn’t that vanilla experience. A queue to get in is the least that could happen on launch day. If players in starting zones can’t complete quests due to no quest mobs being available it will be a horrible and frustrating experience. This experience could prevent new players from coming back and the larger the Classic community is the better. More subscriptions equal more budget for more games and further WoW development. If Classic is popular enough the next expansion might bring some of what made Vanilla so good back to the current version of the game.
says the person not in beta who only goes by youtuber and streamers
I didn’t mean to be comparing the worth of a player by whether they are a hardcore vanilla fan, or someone just casually checking out the game with no particular intention to stay. This kind of player i described as “tourist” since the terminology does fit that description.
Wasn’t meant to be demeaning at all, just trying to say that one is a lot less invested in staying to play vanilla, or didn’t have an active part in the struggle over the years to get it back (simply cause again, there’s no investment yet in the game).
While on the other hand, you have a lot of very dedicated fans that will almost surely pay a monthly sub down the long road, and Blizzard has acknowledged them to be the audience they want to cater to first and foremost. “Classic is a love letter to our community” (quote from a dev interview)
Which is why i agree with not changing the game for QoL reasons, or really any reason that actively interferes with the experience, turning it into something else. However i’m also not ignorant to layerings upsides if it does work out, but it’s absolutely not worth it in my eyes in the big picture.
I’m sorry to hear you had a bad time grouping in the stress test. Layering clearly was activated on the stress test realm, so what you faced was the full server pop going in the forest to exterminate wildlife en masse.
Layering doesn’t solve competition for mobs in starting areas with the way it supposedly works. The only way you could sneak your way around the crowding issues by utilizing layering, is to find someone on a low pop layer to invite you over to gain an advantage since less players will be around to kill everything. Or you log out, and hope you’ll be placed in a low pop layer upon returning.
It sounds to me like you’re looking for sharding, not layering. Although layering is just big sharding anyway for the most part.
About quiet groups: I was in both tests too, and grouped up for every quest. Unlike you however, i happened to experience the opposite of what you went through. All it took was saying hallo and goofing around cause why not, and immediately people started talking all the way through, coordinating, crying on each others shoulders in the kobold mine, etc.
My first group did almost all the starting quests together. Even made a friend just that night, gave out random greys, only to have people come up to me later and give me items as well!
People out of nowhere came up to me and started interacting, blowing me kisses, cheering, bowing. I also started talking with people or loudly hailing Omar during the rituals and inspiring our troops. Ended up creating a raid as well for him. It was really cool and fun! I hope you’ll have a better time next time as well. ![:sun_with_face:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/sun_with_face.png?v=6" ":sun_with_face:")
If you do the math in your scenario.
5 layers is 15K players on one realm (3K per layers …vanilla pop).
In 30 days 12K players leave so you can have no layers.
That’s an 80% drop-off of players.
What game do you know of that had that drastic a drop off in the first month ?
And that is just for 1 realm. They expect that for all realms in 30 days ?
I was able to log out and in to hop layers to level my mining. People wanting this crap technology in Classic ![:nauseated_face:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/nauseated_face.png?v=6" ":nauseated_face:")
![:face_vomiting:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/face_vomiting.png?v=6" ":face_vomiting:")
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Because it isn’t Vanilla. We’ve wanted this re-release for over a decade and what does Actiblizz do? “Here you go guys, an authentic Classic experience plus sharding, the most hated–we mean successful feature of modern WoW! Because you think you don’t want it, but you do.”
It’s infuriating.
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Who’s to say the hype will die past phase 1?
If it doesn’t? The sharding will continue.
I guarantee the server I will play on will have multiple layers because of the people on the server playing. The amount of players may decrease a little bit, but there will be layers past the first phase if the purpose of a layer is a second shard due to population cap on the first layer.
I would rather wait in a que than to be sharded in a different layer.
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Yes, that was my point.
70% of WoW players didn’t make it to level 10 when WoW was new and a pop culture phenomenon.
So to answer your question, I’m going to say World of WarCraft.
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