There were server announcements about things possibly behaving strangely while they did certain things. As they adjusted different criteria for the layers, population being “force moved” between layers as they try to load balance isn’t shocking. It’s part of it being a stress test. They’re trying to figure out what the limitations are. So they don’t need to “reshuffle the deck” in such a manner on live.
I’d reserve final judgement on layering until the final scheduled stress test. Unless they decide to augment it with sharding before then, or they decide to “soak test” layering in the closed beta. (which I still find likely)
Until that point(outside of closed beta), I’d expect layering to be rather unstable in the context of a stress test.
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Layering was demonstrably used in the stress test. It’s known to have been used, we just don’t know when they started using it.
There also is a rumored dev comment made while on the stress test servers that they had enough data even at that point to suggest that the population caps for subsequent stress tests would likely be lowered. So their target may no longer be “an entire realm per shard” to start with at least.
Of course, they may have decided part of the problem was forced population density due to the level cap, and hence the level cap being upped to 10 from 5.
And you have to consider also, that was a framerate drop due entirely to population. No fancy enchants, no fancy particle effects to render on armor or weapons. Just plain gear on otherwise plain characters. Yes, there were spells flying around, but those are pretty low-key by modern graphics standards.
I’d like to see that comment. If a layer can’t hold a full realm, then they need to rework it so it can. They may as well do “In Starters Sharding 400” if the layer is artificially smaller.
Half the population left the starting zones anyway, until after the stress test when they started sending in bosses. They were all running to Gurubashi for the streamer event.
You need to consider that it has been nearly 15 years since WoW released. That means roughly 7.5 doublings of processing power have happened since then. The servers we have today are 128 times more capable than their 2004 counterparts.
Now yes, in same cases this was simply a reduction in hardware needed. So you went from a realm being on mulitple blades to a realm being on a single blade, until ultimately you wound up with multiple realms on a single blade.
They can likely provision layers far more quickly than they can provision a new realm, but the time difference is likely to only be minutes(although one(layering) can be automated. While realm creation should require a human being involved just to “sanity check” things)
Their goal is probably only 2 or 3 layers per realm at present. But if they’re getting hammered hard enough, they’re going to raise the layer cap to whatever they think the hardware can support if it gets bad enough.
Ultimately of course, it becomes a question of available hardware, how much “excess capacity” they have available, and how quickly they can provision and bring more hardware online.
I think they have contingency plans in place for getting completely hammered on Classic release day, but only time will tell as to whether or not those plans are robust enough.
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I don’t think it was a problem with technical capability in many respects, it was a decision made based on gameplay. Just because they technically can do something doesn’t mean they should go ahead and do it, particularly if gameplay is going to suffer as a consequence of it.
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That’s the problem with the logic though. Vanilla servers had 3k people on them at launch. 350,000 people across 89 servers, with some in queue. We want to see that level of people because that’s what it was like then. If Layering is going to prevent us from seeing 500 people in Elwynn Forest at once, then its arbitrarily breaking the gameplay for what they perceive as our benefit. It would be an example of Blizzard choosing to change gameplay for convenience.
Layering at 3k replicates the level of population at launch, while providing capacity as a technical solution. It doesn’t affect gameplay (much) and that’s why its a better solution. If they’re going to just limit us to 100 people in a starter, they may as well shard it.
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Layering at 3K actually does not. 3K was the entire (concurrent) realm population in Vanilla(and it’s on the high end of observed numbers anyone can find). A 3K layer as they initially outlined, was for one continent(half the realm, assuming an even population split between EK and Kalimdo). So you already have twice as many people present as you would have had otherwise.
So dialing the layers back to between 1K or 1.5K or thereabouts, instead of their proposed 3K may be a reasonable measure to take instead. That actually puts them closer to Vanilla’s population, and enables a more stable environment for all concerned.
If they allow the combined total as 3k, yes. I admit I was thinking of a single layer per world, not continent. 1.5k per continent layer is closer, though EK will definitely hit that cap faster than Kalimdor, and it’ll break the “never see someone phase while running between starting zones” example they gave in Dev interviews.
I think they were talking about the ones you can get to without passing through a loading screen. Although I suspect that the layering tech is going to try to keep a specific boat’s passenger manifest on the same layer as well. That’s the point where the layering tech gets weird. Because I can’t imagine the boats being on the same exact schedule between layers. And that leaves open the question about a person on Layer 3 from Eastern Kingdoms going over to Kalimdor and what they might find over there if there aren’t enough players to justify a third layer on Kalimdor.
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Lol i guess J.A.B. WAS right afterall. You think you want it like it was but you really dont. Not sure how you avoided the countless lag outs and crashes and swarming pop that first day. But i didnt and i was there day one as well. I can remember not seeing mobs for long periods of time. The stress isnt a shortened level cap beta. Its cram as many people in one space and see what happens. Stress is not beta. And i guess you owe JAB a tip of the hat sir.
Why not? Right now they are on the same schedule between continents which in the early days were on different servers. So there must be some sort of synchronization method. Given that in the early days you’d get dumped in the water sometimes, I think it has to be there and can extend up through the layers.
They had spawn timer reduction methods in Vanilla, but AFAIK they only kicked in when all mobs of a certain type were dead, and weren’t based at all on the current population.
I’m pretty sure the boat is a “simple process” that kicks off on world(or layer) creation, that executes a “simple loop” from then on. So it’s location at a given time is a simple function of how long it has been since it was spawned.
So unless the layer “spawns” at the exact right moment, or they add additional logic to speed it up/slow it down(could probably be done easily enough while it’s waiting at a dock), the craft would be running on a different cycle. I guess that would be an item for some streamers to possibly play with in the next stress test, as I don’t think layering is being used in the Closed Beta as of yet.
The “simple process” you described would have to be independent of the continental server instances, otherwise it wouldn’t be in sync in normal play and you’d fall off the Zepp/Boat every time.
Therefore the same synchronization that keeps the two continental instances in sync can sync the extra layers of those continents. 2 or 8, the process would be the same and use the same interface.
Not quite. The Boat is a single object. The object has been assigned a process that causes it to execute a loop. That loop then causes it to travel between two points. Sometimes just between zones, sometime it is between continents.
The Continent transition was “problematic” to say the least during Vanilla. For reasons you mention. But the logic involved in preventing people from being dropped off of the boat and into fatigue water still remains a part of that loop.
The same loop that doesn’t follow a schedule in the sense you want it to(IE: “The bus is supposed to be here at 5 after the hour”), but likely runs on a simple clock/timer which starts its counter/reset cycle when the world/“layer” is sufficiently initialized. If I’m right, then you could be in Layer A, watch the boat leave, go to Layer B, see the boat waiting dockside, and switch to Layer C to see the boat pull in, and Layer D will show you yet another version of the Boat just entering into your visual range.
Edit: So if someone wants to REALLY live on the edge for the stress test. Start taking group invites to (presumably) other layers while on a boat/zepplin and see what happens.
And if I was the developer on it, my solution would be an independent timer that both continents have access to to sync the boats so that they’re waiting when the PC’s zone in.
The logic of “Time since started” is likely what caused all the problems in the first place, of someone thinking it was sufficient to start both servers up at the same time. I very much doubt that with all their cross realm and multi planetary synchronization, Blizzard can’t sync all copies of a boat that’s been going back and forth for 15 years.
I do not think this is true…
3k to a layer…
You will have 300+ people in the first zone… day 1
unless you are one of the lucky ones on the last layer…
This is the reality of vanilla wow… this was the vanilla experience.
If you want to wait until the rush passes, then it’ll be fine…
But if you want rush on with everyone else it’s going to be a complete disaster for the first 4 hours lol…
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Believe it or not… that is the vanilla experience…
It’s going to be a complete meltdown for the first 24 hours…
No quests being done, unless you are one of the lucky few you gets ahead of the curve.
This post is funny lol… I have no idea how you didn’t understand that this was the reality of the starting zones on launch.
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I was talking about what people saw on the stress test. I saw far more people in VoT in the streams, that you would with 3000 people spread out amongst all the zones. I’m fairly sure at the start of the test they had layering turned off, because I estimated about 800 people visible in one streamer’s view of the starting point.
Layering was apparently switched on, but logins caused all sorts of issues, and layering is still broken, so I’m guessing the number we saw was due to bugs.
I would like 500 people in each of the starters on day one, because that’s what it was like. I was there, I agree we need it.
Yes an no, I kind of suspect that it’s coded something along the lines of the object.boat.menethil1 (for example) would be calling something like “create obejct.boat.darkshore2” and upon that object(darkshore 2) returning back a certain result, then menethil1 calls “destroy object.boat.menethil1” and the loop continues until “darkshore2” re-creates menethil1. Rinse and repeat.