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.
Wait yes it was… it was their solution to anticipating large server dropoff over time, so when they reduce to 1 layer they had a stable pop. They even said each layer would be the population of about one full vanilla server
I.e. allow 5 layers 3000 each, initially allow 15k players until phase 2 when they remove it and lower cap to 3-5k.
Its 100% an alternative to vanilla size server caps with huge queues.
Why do you think they are making such a big deal about “will populations drop enough before phase 2 to be able to actually turn off layering”
There isn’t an actual monolithic single server like you are thinking. It’s not like it was back in 2004. That’s the whole point of the sharding tech.
The problem is they capped the number of layers at 30. Anymore than that and they won’t be able to remove it before phase 2 as there will be to many players on the big servers. They NEED to close character creation on full realms to stop the lemmings from trying to play on them because they are populated.
Layering is NOT so the servers can handle more people. The server can only handle let’s say 10,000 players at once. If all those players log in at launch, they will all be on one quest in one dimension. Layering is meant to create multiple realities of the same place.
If the first quest is picking apples and everyone has to pick apples from 10 trees. Without layering, all 10,000 people would be trying to pick their apples from the same 10 tree. WITH layering you could have 100 layers with 10o people in each layer each picking from 10 trees.
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Oh so you mean how every single server and expansion handled it pre-sharding?
Layering was made to prevent dead servers when thw tourists leave because they anticipate dropoff. They even said every layer should roughly equal the population cap of vanilla.
the only problem was the massive amount of people using that as their argument as a positive for layering trying to shut down anti-layer posts
This is mis information the server isn’t some monolithic piece of hardware sitting somewhere like it was in 2004. It’s spread out between a bunch of machines that don’t even need to be in the same data center. The 10,000 players is just some arbitrary limit but there’s no reason it can’t just keep scaling. There’s a Q&A where the principal software dev is interviewed and he basically says that their layering implementation was a design decision. Whether or not you agree with that decision I’m not getting into. Just letting you know how their tech works.
Technically this is true. Each server back in 2004 was about four blades in one chassis - one for Eastern Kingdoms, one for Kalimdor, more for various instances and dungeons, etc… So, while not one server, it was one chassis.
While each realm/server doesn’t need to be in the same data center, you’re typically going to want to have each realm housed in one blade chassis with others backup/DR realms in DCs elsewhere.
Given this information, my guess is that there’s going to be an upper limit to the number of people available on any one realm even with layering. As to what that number is, I don’t know. I suppose you could have multiple blade chassis working in unison to expand that number but you generally want to keep your cluster environment to one chassis at a time.
Now imagine to all those crying about layering… just how bad it would be without layering.
They are letting in more players than what they expect to have when they eventually turn off layering.
The cap on server populations accounts for the estimated dropoff.
Right now, there are still too many players on the overpopulated realms even accounting for the eventual dropoff.
Realms will always be on servers. Whether those virtual realms are on one physical server or multiple physical servers, virtual realm capacities are still limited by the physical servers that they are running on. The fact of the matter is that realms require physical hardware to be ran. To increase the population capacity you have to either extend that realm to another physical server or increase the capacity of a single physical server. This goes for any and every server everywhere. Virtual servers are always limited by the capabilities of the physical machines they are on. Yes you can have multiple virtual servers on one physical server but if that physical server has 3 virtual servers each taking up 33% of the capacity of the server, then the only two ways to increase capacity is to either reduce the other two servers capacities or upgrade the physical server/ add another physical server with load balancing.
Realms will always be on servers. Whether those virtual realms are on one physical server or multiple physical servers, virtual realm capacities are still limited by the physical servers that they are running on. The fact of the matter is that realms require physical hardware to be ran. To increase the population capacity you have to either extend that realm to another physical server or increase the capacity of a single physical server. This goes for any and every server everywhere. Virtual servers are always limited by the capabilities of the physical machines they are on. Yes you can have multiple virtual servers on one physical server but if that physical server has 3 virtual servers each taking up 33% of the capacity of the server, then the only two ways to increase capacity is to either reduce the other two servers capacities or upgrade the physical server/ add another physical server with load balancing.
This is like really simple stuff man. People have been virtualizing hardware since the 70s. This isn’t a technical problem.
No, they are not the same whatsoever. Layering is creating essentially multiple virtual servers within a server. The host server that contains all the layers will still have the same capacity whether they are running no layers or 5 layers.
Imagine it like a large empty room with a maximum capacity of 100 people, declared by the fire marshal. That is the realm. You can stand there and see all 99 other people. Now take this room and add a wall that splits it in half. Each section of the room now can only hold 50 people, but the entire room as a whole still holds 100 people. You can keep adding walls, but it doesn’t do anything to increase the size of the room and you’ll never get more than the 100 people total. Hence why more layers doesn’t help with queues at all. The capacity of the realm does not increase with layers. This is why they can also remove layering completely without destroying a realm’s capacity later on.
Nah man they’re the same exact tech just a slightly different implementation
They can’t stop adding their retail ideas in the game. They just cannot comprehend that not all ideas are good ideas, despite how many of their circle might agree.
They keep applying the same rationale over and over despite clear failure.
Layering was to fix so many people in one zone that the game would crash.
Along with too many people to get anything done.
How does one increase the capacity of the hardware servers by increasing virtual instances? It’s not really the same at all in this sense. If the servers were limited by the software, then yes, increasing virtual instances could increase capacity, but that clearly isn’t the bottleneck here. The whole issue would not exist if all it took was more virtual instances to avoid queues. There would be literally no cost in dynamically scaling the realm capacity in that case.