Sharding never had anything to do with the log in server
Absolutely, I agree.
The layering DOES, however, reduce queues by the fact that you can have more people on one server than was comfortably possible in Vanilla.
But it’s kind of an illusion, and there have to be people Blizzard right now chewing their fingernails to the bone wondering if they oversubscribed servers like Herod and Whitemane and those people plan on STAYING there and not leaving.
The more people per server, the longer layering will have to stay to make it viable. Servers like Bloodsail won’t have much problem getting rid of layering. Herod and Whitemane - not so much.
louder for the people in the back
Just wanted to re-quote this for visibility. This is 100% what layering was for and they even mentioned in recent interviews to expect login queues (along with the posts made on this forum about queues).
It does help to an extent with queues but they stated they are putting hard caps on server capacity to ensure more stable populations down the line (hence, queues). They don’t want to overpopulate servers now and in a month have them be dead when people leave. They specifically told people to make characters on lower population realms if they don’t want long queues. They’re trying to ensure that we have good populations on every realm when the players start quitting/playing less.
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I don’t think I completely understood all this until just a few weeks ago. It’s a knife edge dance Blizz is doing here, and they’re taking it on the chin in the attempt to make things work out in the long run.
Can’t you almost see pissed off Blizzard devs - yesterday afternoon with the explosion of hate on the forums - just saying “Screw it, just spin up a bunch more servers and let them deal with the consequences in two months.”
Personally, i’m hoping Blizz was wrong in the beginning and we (Classic players) are staying for the long haul. I’m guessing we’ll probably know by around Tuesday by how many queues remain. Although, vanishing queues won’t tell us the story of actual server pop. With layering, we can be running servers that are way too full for actual un-layered population and we’d never know it.
Hm … on edit - I do wonder if Blizz capped the server pop on a per-layer basis, figuring on being able to scale back the layers as people leave. The wording on their discussion left that up in the air as to exactly what was meant by “cap server population to vanilla levels”.
They can increase the number of layers until everyone gets in, but then players will stay on the overpopulated realms. It’ll make it more difficult to turn off layering later on.
I think their current strat is to wait for the current realms to fill up and become too full (i.e. there will be really bad queues when they try to remove layering). At that point, open up a new realm. Let players redistribute. Repeat.
^ Everyone read the answer from the principal software developer linked in the QA above. So many people are saying the layering and sharding are completely different techs when really they’re just a slightly different implementation. They made a decision to not go this way because they thought the experience would be worsened. They use the example of Rexxar. Would you want him to randomly be on the other side of the map because you randomly got migrated to a different instance when another filled up? It’s a tough design choice to balance and ultimately you can disagree with them. There’s a lot of misinformation and assumptions about their sharding/layering/whatever they want to call it. The actual developers explanation is the only one I’ve seen that actually makes sense.
Blizz (Ion) stated that he expects the population to have a large drop off after the initial excitement of Classic, so he doesn’t want to open too many servers. But by his own logic, why don’t they artificially inflate the server sizes to have a higher maximum capacity for the first two weeks and use layering? If the population is going to diminish, then there won’t be an issue in the long run. The choice to just hold hard caps on number of people online per realm is absurd… 4 hr queues are unacceptable.
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Que would he substantially worse wothout layering.
Without layering they would need at least x2/x3 servers then exist now, which would 100% lead to dead servers later (there already might be 1-2 too many servers for long term population)
Because they want to beable to turn layering off. If you think 50% of the popultion eill leave and you build server capsed based on that number… adding more people means youll never beable to turn layering off
Layering is similar to phasing. Layering is splitting up everyone on the same quest/ set of quests to reduce the number of people fighting for the same resource. I.E having 10 groups of 10 people picking apples.
Phasing is splitting up people based on which quests have been completed. 100 people that have already picked their apples are now fighting over oranges.
The difference isn’t really how, but why people are separated.
That’s like saying that you should artificially inflate the capabilities of your computer during periods of high particle density in a crowded raid. You don’t just artificially increase the capacity a server can handle without adding more hardware. Sure you can split a server across multiple physical machines, but each physical machine can only handle so much before more hardware is required.
So sure they might be able to full utilize 10 physical servers today or for the next week, but then those servers would barely be used in 3 months.
This, if people really are just going to deuce out in droves than the answer is increase amount of layers per servers and let people fill them up, if people leave the game just put them in fewer and fewer layers, if people dont leave they will have to do something else for P2 since increasing queue times 10 fold would be bad for the health of the game.
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IMO, they need to have more servers less layering. But I understand, they are worried that 3 months from now they will have ghost servers. So I’ll stay understanding up until they keep layering going too long.
They never said that.
Layering is the solution to 10,000 people trying to tag a single named mob.
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Layering did help with queues. But there was still way too many people. In phase 2 when they remove layering all these high pop realms are going to see 20k queue again an start crying in forums
If they remove layering and combine all the layers into a single layer, the queues will INCREASE and you’ll have a terrible in-game experience, with current population numbers.
O_o Layering has ZERO to do with queues. Some of the responses in this thread make me wonder if you dudes need help getting cold cereal in the morning or remembering to breath.
They can use the same tech to reduce queues. They made a design decision not to. Your comment is super ironic.
Some of the responses in this thread make me wonder if you dudes need help getting cold cereal in the morning or remembering to breath.
Can’t handle the irony here
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Layering only splinters the population into different layers on a server once they are ON the server. Queues regulate the population as they attempt to get on the server.