You are more than likely grossly overestimating the amount of people that are going to be playing both Classic and Modern in long term fashion.
It’s more than likely that the populations will be largely separated from each other, sure there will be some amount of traffic between them but I would suspect it’s mostly Modern WoW players visiting Classic.
Most long term Classic players likely don’t even own the latest expansion and ain’t gonna be buying it either.
If a person thinks like this then that person cannot believe anything they say.
Rather bleak way of seeing things, and also brings up the question why even be here if believing basically the highest up person in the project is not possible.
Also Ion, stating that for the first couple of phases, they’re looking at a couple of months, just slightly reduced for the first one depending on where the playerbase is at.
Very open ended still, but here it’s clear they are estimating months already even early on. And it’s not just Ion.
Other Devs also talked about this.
https://youtu.be/UHMd0KC3eTY?t=244 Here they explain their choice for using sharding/layering, and give time estimates for how long they intend to use it, again 3-4 “however many weeks after we feel we hit that mark”.
https://youtu.be/UHMd0KC3eTY?t=747 here they are talking about layerings ability to phase out players/armies during it’s very early months (!), implying again a timeframe ranging into months for the first 2 phases.
So no, months are not far stretched at all currently. Even the devs themselves estimate a timeframe like it. If you watch the full videos, you’ll also gain a good base of info to estimate stuff yourself.
I agree, this would be really helpful because right now there are so many different topics on it, and clearly people want to talk and discuss layering.
And you might be vastly underestimating the lengths a corporation will go to cut costs.
If the decision is a hundred thousand a month vs. a small home town server feel, the people making that decision wont even what in the hell the decision is about. To them it’s 100k a month vs’ no idea what that is. Here’s 150k for a PR firm to come up with plan to get the customers to accept it.
They have said that they HOPE it won’t go past phase 1. It doesn’t fit in phase 2 they say.
If you give players 2 months on Classic WoW in high level zones the economy will be irrecoverably broken. People who are arguing against this are either trolls or whiteknights. Literally everyone who knows anything about Classic WoW realizes how incredibly broken it is for this to be possible.
Few days of layering at launch is a potential necessary evil.
Few weeks of layering means a group of people who control the market and are filthy rich on your server. Also, mages lol aoe-spawn power-level.
Few months of layering means everybody who knows how to use it will be able to farm 2/3/4/5x the amount of materials need to craft the most powerful items in the game, buy the most powerful items in the game, and easily dodge gankers in the process by layer hopping.
I am actually happily surprised so many people responded by saying “deal with it”. Sign of a lost argument when you have to just demand the other people quit the game instead of offering a fix or reason it isn’t bad. People know this is bad. Why is Blizzard silent?
Do you really think paying off streamers with perks like beta access, media passes, and inside information will be enough to keep the community from eventually realizing how horrific a thing this could be?
Why not just come out and say it won’t last more than a few days or MAX a week? Promise that and this all goes away…no more issues.
Did you read what I’ve posted at all? Whatever he was saying then is already contradicted by the reality of it being the same sharding as in BfA. In every bloody stream it’s obvious. People phase in an out, hop shards, etc.
Plus later down the line there is this nice contradiction to the mechanics and, most importantly, the timeline of what Ion said previously.
I just wonder, what is it? The blind belief that people will just eat it up again?
Or is it a deliberate proof of the “you think you do but you do not” point from his part? Like when people who asked for vanilla realize they’re being sold lvl 60 capped legion, they won’t stay and play, anybody should understand this. And twitch kids won’t play it because the game moves nowhere and looks ‘bad’ by BfA standards. Is it just an ego trip here to be able to say “I told you so” to those who don’t understand what’s going on here?
All I’ve seen are happy smiling developers saying how they are trying to stay authentic to Vanilla source material I don’t want to think they are lying so I won’t.
And when it comes to the beta streams…well I don’t watch them but they are after all streams about the beta they are likely just testing stuff and firing up layers and shutting them down repeatedly to test out how it works or something.
No reason to get all fussy about testing happening in a beta phase for crying out loud.
Now if it turns out they were lying and all the horrible modern stuff is there to stay well tough luck I suppose I’m quitting after phase 1 then.
They know this though even the most valiant “white knights” like me when it comes to launch phase solutions will quit if they fail to keep their promises and remove them in a timely manner.
Yeah, smiling interviews that contradict one another. That’s the problem.
Sharding is the only thing about which we didn’t have a clear exhaustive blue post, while evidence and contradicting statements keep piling up. This is the problem.
Blizzard has stated they will turn it off after the first month or so, as layering would interfere with World Boss experience among other things. All layering is there for is so you won’t have 2000 people in Northshire trying to do quests.
