Layering is ruining beta

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
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How many of that 70% of under 10 were bank alts ?

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Players, not characters.

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Layering, nobody how they do it is a stupid thing to put into the MMORPG. There are always going be “Fun” layers were there are large PvP battles. People will be stuck in another layer having to try and get invited to the other layer. Even know you already created a large raid to counter them. I had this happen to me to many time on Emerald Dream. It’ll be same thing in classic and it is stupid to have such a thing in here ruins the purpose of vanilla WoW.

And what happens if classic grows at a insane level and keep growing past phase 2?

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Ok, I just looked that up. That percentage was stated for the end of wotlk. Morhime said only 30% of new players make it past level 10.
Also stated that at the end of wotlk the total population was the same as in 2008…11.5 million.

Do you have any links for vanilla wow ?

Here’s for wotlk:
www(dot)eurogamer(dot)net/articles/blizzard-70-percent-of-new-wow-players-dont-get-past-level-10_1

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As far as I can tell, that 70% number is for the lifespan of the game to that point, which would include Vanilla.

The point is, even when WoW was fresh and prevalent in pop culture, only 30% of players stuck with it. It grew during that time period because of the sheer number of people trying it due to it being a pop culture phenomenon.

Classic will be neither new, nor a pop culture phenomenon. The chances of layering even being necessary past the initial honeymoon period are very low.

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You obviously do not know what Beta means.

It is not to enjoy. It is to test and find flaws and report the findings.

If it means you are going to play solo on an entire server so be it, but for the games quality sake go do what you suppose to do and find the flaws.

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Honestly, it really is that simple. Either they make things work so Classic can be a faithful recreation of Vanilla, or Blizzard opt in for making Classic “remastered”, changing the game as they plan to now with “modern in-game QoL changes” no one asked for in the vanilla community in the first place.

“But omg, what about the servers way down the line!?”
What about the weeks and months you’ll spend your time playing a different game from Vanilla, having people poof in and out as they layer hop to their advantage or out of necessity?
Don’t lower your standards about the game’s authenticity and design unless you don’t value your own time spent on the game that’s supposed to be, and is marketed as, a faithful recreation of Vanilla WoW.

You should get to play the game that’s advertised right from the get go, not from the point of weeks and months in. They said you can experience the humble beginnings of Vanilla WoW in their own ad. That means, from Day 1 you should have access to that opportunity.
Why’d you want to miss out on that?

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216

he’s just mad asmason can’t get more people to fight for him.

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I’m not sure I’d be willing to take a bet on either side of that claim.

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I respect your well thought out post.

But I would like to pin you down on something.

In what way will layering disrupt and reduce the community aspect?

Specifically.

I definitely get the jarring aspect of seeing layering kick in. Which only tells me that layering needs to be worked on. I personally think that when a layer get’s to 90%… that a new queue should form until say 75% of a layer population is queued up, then it is spawned with those people. Timers should be used to prevent abusing layer swapping.

But think about it… I think servers are allowed to go to about 20k-30k people… with a concurrent online number of 3000ish.

If you are one of the lucky 3000 to get in on launch night… how is it any less destructive to the community for 27,000 to stare at a queue while you play for hours.

If you don’t see those 27,000 people because they are not in game… or not on your layer, what is the difference? How is your experience any different?

How is it NOT better for the community for your friends to be able to log in and get layered together with you to enjoy launch night? And the first month or so?

It #feelsbadman to log in and hear your friends in discord stuck in hours of queues. It #feelsworseman to be the friend who cannot log in while your friends are in game playing.

Now I get you on the issue where you can be walking along, NOT expecting to change layer and it does… for no apparent reason.

That should be fixed. A layer should not dynamically move people from a layer who didn’t request a change via joining a party.

Layering is a necessary “evil” that will change the experience somewhat… But the fact that maybe 3 million instead of 300,000 people will be wanting to play on day one requires it be managed differently.

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First, i just wanna say thanks for bringing such a refreshing attitude to the table. I really appreciate it :slightly_smiling_face: Always awesome to just discuss these things together on a friendly, honest basis.

On topic,

Assuming they do put it in, i agree that it’s important to make sure the layers always have a balanced population in them, to prevent incentives for using layers (and players!) as resource gathering method(s) and other abusive behaviours that advantage someone’s gameplay in weird ways.
If im not mistaken, the queues already work in alignment with trying to have enough people ready for the next layer, but i’m not sure just how many a new layer would start off with.

I’d suppose to go with an amount in the range like you proposed seems like a healthy approach overall, cause it prevents it from being too empty.

But i do see also that it would increase queue times quite a bit, and if anyone from Layer 1 get’s switched over to the new Layer 2 cause the system thinks it’s necessary to put more people in Layer 2, they’re gonna have a lot of people spawn in at the same time :smile: That could look very odd.

Oh yeah, it will help with the initial access of the game, i don’t doubt that one at all. It’s gonna prevent you from #feelsbadman’ing with an umbrella all alone in the rain, because indeed, you’re going to have a better chance to play with your friends quickly at the start. There will still be queues, but not as heftily, that’s true!

But here’s the thing. In the big picture, this launch is for a whole community, and a whole lot of curious people who may also want to become a part of it if they get enchanted by the game as they play.

If Blizzard uses layering, they enable a ton of people to access the game easier and faster, but it comes at the cost of tremendous change to the game design, which in turn gives those who play during layerings stay for the first weeks or months a “wrong” first impression to the game.
Why? Because they don’t actually play the “full” version of Classic, but rather, the “layered” version of it, which is an extremely untimely version to present to your audience when they will judge your whole game on it in the first couple days/weeks. (and also the attitude from Blizzards towards the game)

Basically, people will judge the game they actually get to play when they enter the world.
And if Classics success, determined by the judgement of both old and new folk about their experience in the first few days or weeks, is going to hinge on a version of it that’s not even the same thing, aka the “layered Classic”, things look really bad for the game compared to what’s possible.
Many people are not going to come back after they initially checked out the game for a couple days, or have waited for it for years only to see it changed. Many won’t even know that this is a temporary measure of weeks/months, and assume this is the actual game they’re gonna invest their time and energy into.

Keep in mind, these people expect “World” of Warcraft, not “Worlds”.
It’s the whole premise of the game, to be one unique world, with it’s unique inhabitants, and it’s so believable that you completely lose yourself in it. It’s designed around that. It’s the WoW magic.
And that’s not even going to be what people will get to experience and base their judgement on! That’s really damning for the game. At least have people judge the full version right from the beginning, i’d say.
Otherwise, WoW’s enchanting spell will have a much higher resist chance overall on the audience checking it out, be it new or old, cause the people come in with modern gear into an old game that was never meant to handle that. It messes everything up with it, it’s out of place. So, what do do?

In order to allow WoW to do it’s magic effectively, Blizzard will have to choose the other option:

No shlayering. That, even with very good tech, will bring it’s own challenges with it because of the big initial wave of people.
On your sides PoV, you’ll have to get your PepeHands ready as you might end up choosing a realm with your friends that’s gonna be very full, and the queues will be reflecting that for sure.
Many shoulders will be cried on in discord that day, but i promise you, your pain will be shared by me. It’s for the greater good of WoW at least. :grin: We’re gonna be okey very soon! Anyway!

Blizzard can absolutely pull this off.

They said in recent interviews, that they have the ability to open up new servers very quickly depending on demand, and are well prepared this time around (they also have name reserves which can help a little).
However, opening up new servers quickly brings the risk that many people who just come to check out the game and pick those servers would leave soon after, which a good portion of those is really likely to do.

In order to combat that, they’d have to manually attempt to balance out populations early on while communities are still forming, perhaps offering free transfers when they detect a good amount of tourists leaving.
If there are still queues on particular hotspot servers, they could offer said free transfers early on from those servers, to less populated servers who just had a tourist dropoff, and so on.

It would require a lot of effort from them, and also likely cost more, but it would secure the authenticity of the games design, and in the big picture, have an overall increased success chance with the audience, old and new.
Why? Because they get to judge the game in it’s best (and only!) authentic state, as the full on Classic game right from the beginning, no shlayering shenanigans attached.
It would be a big win for the community, as it can establish itself as originally intended on their realm right from the get go, and balancing adjustments in terms of server health can be made without interfering with the game design itself by using free transfers from hot spots to tourist exiting servers early on while communities are still fresh and adjusting.
Except like this, they can properly experience the game by sharing their 1 world, and meet eachother not just under certain conditions, but everytime they are online in this world they share. Basically, the game can work as intended.

If you and your friends are on a realm where you’re in a fat queue, chances are you might be able to transfer off early on onto a less busy realm, and play with eachother sooner that way. Either way, it’s only going to be temporary, the spook is very soon over and thing settle in place.

Will Blizzard do things this way? Do they dare?! I have no idea!
There is a chance though. It’s gonna require a lot of stamina, preperation and courage from them, i can assure you. :smile:
Either way is definitely not perfect. But no one expects it to be i hope. Because if you at any point leave people up to populating a server for the longterm by themselves you’re inevitably in for imbalance issues anyway (seeing as layering will affect the first stage of the game, but not the whole rest) as there will be plenty opportunities once again for instability after it’s removed.

I certainly hope they will be up to the challenge regardless and take the risk, cause i think they’d have much better success rate with Classic following this style of approach. The community would trust them for once, also loving Blizzard for letting them play Classic this way - the authentic way. The only way :pray: :white_check_mark:

New people would also get to judge the game in it’s prime state, increasing their chance to sign up for the long ride, because what they see and experience the game as is the same at launch until it’s last minute.
Most of the people who would complain are going to be those who forgot what massive MMORPG launches actually look like. Let them experience that! They may just end up liking it after anyways.
Also, me and many other devoted purists wouldn’t have to wait months in the worst case to finally get to play Classic, which helps :grin:

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The beta server is dead. In a total coincidence, the decline of population started the day they really turned up the layering, slicing a low pop server into multiple extremely low pop servers.

Test successful…I guess?

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Also coincides with 8.2 coming out.
Those retail players have gone back to BFA.

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Explain how more nodes crashes the economy? It may lower price, which is a good thing. No one has been able to explain why one person having 100 black lotuses or minerals does anything negative to the game’s economy.

I work in finance, specifically asset management, so I like to think if someone makes a rationale case, I’d understand.

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A straightforward post, but your point is so undeniable that it needs no more elaboration.

I will reconsider playing the entire thing if this feature to dilute features is in launch.

Going by the stress test, it seems the system did not prevent overcrowding of people wanting to tag mobs, making it completely pointless. Tear the bandaid off, this is going one way, layering included or not, and that’s the annoying “can barely do quests right now” way, so you may as well let it happen.

I know you asked first, but I don’t have the complete knowledge to answer. However, could you explain why this is a good thing? It would seem to me that eventually you would do more work than it’s actually worth selling things for.

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price is going to go lower even if there is no abuse.
Multiple layers of players with a single AH.
Instead of 3K you’ll have 9-12K spread across layers all putting their stuff up on the AH.

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This one would definitely balance out somewhat over time into its own economy which you’re right isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It more so harms players who would be competitive or just want a sense of fairness. You would feel cheated if your assets stayed the same while everyone else was able to duplicate their assets for months. Players who either take it slow or feel obliged not to partake in the exploits simply feel cheated.

The economy itself wouldn’t crash because this is literally a fresh launch of WoW so there is no existing economy to crash but in terms of affect to gameplay it would be harder to get gameplay elements like skills and mounts which you could usually get from selling some gathering materials or items. With everything less expensive and not as much exploits to gold farming as there is to item duplication you won’t be able to buy gameplay goldsinks from the money you made from the economy that you normally would have.

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Thank you for the legit response. I can certainly see how a player may feel disadvantageous if someone is farming rare gathering spawns through this exploitation.

That being said, it still has no actual harm to the individual or general player base. I’d say that 90% of actual players will not know it is happening or know that other players are richer than they are.

It might trigger some perception of unfairness if you see people doing it in Phase 1, but then you could also just as easily claim that hunters and mage solo farming Dire Maul is just as exploitative and damaging to the economy. Only certain classes can do it and farm tons more gold per hour than other classes.

Does knowing that also make the player base feel like the game is unfair? In my opinion it’s just another game mechanic that knowledgeable and persistent players can abuse. I personally won’t be doing it, but I’ll probably solo farm SM:Cath on my mage for gold.