I think they are aiming at around 10000 concurrent with this layering for the launch. 10000 names is not much unless a player wants to be Legolas or Gimli.
Besides they are opening the character creation 1½ weeks in advance.
I think everyone can manage to pick a name in 1½ weeks and if not they got bigger problems than that.
So long as it’s temporary I’m fine with layering at the start. It’ll only be active until those who’re just seeing what the fuss is about and have not intention of playing properly quit.
A stable launch experience matters more to me personally.
DCs maybe, lag definitely if you had a million people at launch, it’s huge number of people to handle, queues are terrible, you’d sit for hours and wouldn’t be able to get in since to get further in queue, someone needs to log off first, mob competition will still be there, and dead realms don’t happen on start, and it’s not something you can counter, people on some realms will just quit, you can’t prevent that. Except you can, with layering.
If you got no layering, you got bunch of 3k realms, and some realms will lose nearly all population, you’ll be left with 300-400 players, and they’d need to transfer and rename. With layering, you got layers totalling in let’s say 9k per realm, which means even if majority leaves, u got 2.5-4k people left.
As long as they remove it, I have 0 complaints. I just wish they’d be more definite with the time frame. I jsut don’t trust the language around it.
Well I think they plan to remove it asap, it really does not feel Vanilla and they know it. They know how much it messed up current game, but with all instanced content in current game it somewhat works, in Classic it won’t work, and they should tackle it in month or so.
To be honest they were quite definite.
At the latest it will be gone by the end of phase 1.
And earlier if possible.
I don’t know how they can be more definite without saying straight up at the end of phase 1.
But personally I will rather have that option open to remove it earlier if possible.
theres actually never a no layers on a cloud. even a hardcore server that didnt allow layer hopping, is itself a layer. this is why the hardcore server option could also work for people willing to wait in queues as there can be layers of hardcore servers with long login queues that can be merged like the normal layer servers will do at end of phase 1. once layering is turned off on a server, all layers merge on that server. or should i say, all sublayers of the server layer, merge. same can happen for hardcore servers.
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For most realms Layering won’t even exist past the first few days or weeks.
It will be the few high pop realms that will have Layering for the majority of phase 1
it’ll still exist in that until layering is turned off, you’ll be able to layer hop
100% fine with phase 1 layering. Everyone crammed into early zones would be really cool to see at first, but really fun to play in never.
It’s not really authentic to enclose hardcores into their own servers.
A healthy server needs to have it’s hardcores and it’s casuals and everything between. Let’s not make this more complicated than it needs to be.
Layering for couple weeks is necessary and a great way to achieve at least somewhat authentic server population composition.
i dont mean hardcore player type. i mean vanilla wow fans who want no layer hopping, no crz, no sharding and are willing to wait in a login queue to get it.
Well CRZ won’t be in the game, sharding won’t be in the game.
Layer hopping will likely be in the game for a few weeks.
I think making a server without is a bit overkill just for few weeks.
And considering it would likely be pretty dead soon I don’t think Blizzard wants to have those people screaming “pleeeease pleeease let us transfer our realm is dead” after a month or so.
What you are SAYING stands up, but I think the dissappointment in HAVING to use Layering should be made known by the community to hopefully reinforce that they do remove it ASAP. If everyone was totally happy with the idea, “woohoo layering”, I’d be worried they would take more liberties for their convenience rather than working harder to keep it authentic.
but it wouldnt have to be transferred as it is itself a layer , like all the other layers. servers are just layers of the cloud. its all layers haha. on a server layer you have sublayers, those sublayers can be merged when layers are turned off. they can all share the same character database for naming. they just wont have layer hopping and as a result, will require a login queue. the layers are still there cause the whole game is a bunch of layers. they just cant access each other till layering is turned off.
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So you would like to have the entire PVP server population of NA east for example share a namebase am I getting this right? That can be hundreds of thousands of names in the launch phase?
That one could call a restriction indeed. Layer hopping for a few weeks is not big enough of a problem to go to these lengths and create more problems while at it.
well they know how many pvp servers they want to make. i dont know the answer to that. how many pvp servers? but every server layer with its sublayers shares a database. if they want 10k max per server, then the answer is 10k people on the same server, share the same database for names. some of those 10k will be the same person making 10 different characters haha
The only way I see this “hardcore” system of yours working goes like this
Option A is otherwise entirely normal Layered launch server but it has an extra option to go on a locked Layer that doesn’t allow layer hopping until the system is removed and that locked layer is capped at 3000.
But in the end it will be merged with the rest of the server anyway.
This would work and I would have no problems with it.
This would have to be done to every server though because having it only in one could cause population differences.
Also naysayers will say that this “locked layer” option players would be in a disadvantage to the layered ones because those guys get to hop and eventually when the merge happens they’ll have more stuff than the ones in the locked layer. So it would solve nothing when it comes to chronic complainers.
Option B is that a layer is locked once it’s full and then another layer starts to fill until it’s full etc. And they merge in the end.
This then again is a problem because if people want to play with their friends and some of them happened to register at a later date or even an hour later perhaps they can’t play together until the merge happens.
This is very much a customer inconvenience all big corporations Blizzard included want to avoid.
And thus I believe it will be layering everywhere for a few weeks and then it’s done. People will forget it was ever there and life goes on.
thats precisely what i meant. it’ll feel just like vanilla, wont be server hopping, so wont feel like layering, because the population isnt being load balanced by layering it has to be load balanced at the login queue
i think it needs its own server with sublayers that are locked to layer hopping. and then merged when layers are turned off. that way they are all at the same level of server progression, generally speaking.
have a hardcore pve. a hardcore pvp. a hardcore rp. for oceanic and usa. so thats six additional server layers, each with sublayers that will cap at 3k each and maintain login queues due to no layer hopping or load balancing.
all servers eventually become hardcore when layering is turned off… that is, if it is turned off.
To be honest though I really don’t think were even going to see much of this “intentional server hopping” some people are so horrified about.
Most people just don’t care about the whole thing and it’s going to be just a small amount of neckbeards fervently trying to abuse the system because they can’t help themselves. It’s not going to be a big issue for the small amount of time it’s going to be implemented.