Because it has an impact on the entire game.
One good example is there may be someone that you would have met but will never meet because they were in a different layer.
This thread has a bunch of videos that show some of the other issues.
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In the end if its a high way or a server the ideas are still the same the through put you need for a server is something that needs to be taken into account. There will always be people trying to game the system. Much of it comes down to how many people you expect to come through an area.
Thus larger highways and larger servers need more lanes or layers to support that area. Before any of you city planners come after to to let me know that larger roads actually dont alleviate traffic and incentive more trraffic via allowing more sprawl, yes i understand that. The something could happen and then we get traffic jam or in our case Queues. However, there will be a short period where the larger road or more layers will make things better than just increasing the cap on a server.
If layering will only be for a very limited time, why is it such a point of contention?
There’s 3 reasons why this is the case.
- It makes the world more empty.
For the starting zones, this isn’t an issue at all. In fact, it’s the main reason why this system even exists. People will have much more fun questing in Elwynn Forest or Durotar when they’re not forced into a bottleneck since literally thousands of players are trying to kill the same mob to complete their quest. This will be the case for all 1-12 zones and even some 12-20 zones like The Barrens and Westfall. But when people start reaching Level 20, this solution starts to turn into a problem instead. At this point, people will be far more spread out, with players having many more zones that they can level and grind in, not to mention the various instances. And since the tourists this system is meant to filter will start departing, it means that zones will start feeling much emptier. It’ll be more infuriating to quest when people you otherwise would have grouped up with are instead trapped in another layer. And there’s no reason to filter capital cities. Nobody wants Orgrimmar to feel empty, we want those cities to feel as lively and bustling as possible.
- World PvP will be diminished by layering.
Remember when I said that layering starts having diminishing returns at around Level 20? That’s also when World PvP starts happening as well, as both factions meet in Ashenvale or Hillsbrad Foothills. This means that it’s much less likely to encounter another enemy player and fight them than it would be if layering didn’t exist at this point. It also means that the big world PvP brawls between dozens of players that many people dream of will instead be much smaller and much less frequent, When one does occur, it could be happening right on top of you and you’d never even know it since it’s on another layer.
Additionally, many people (particularly some cowardly streamers) have been using it to escape world PvP scenarios, as they can have someone invite them into a group and more than likely switch layers while doing so. This can be used before they resurrect from death to evade someone who ganked them before or even while they’re already in a fight to phase themselves out and end the battle prematurely.
- Layering can be used to exploit resource gain
There have been clips of streamers using layering to gain multiple Arena Masters in a matter of minutes. Since these layers make the world already emptier, they face less competition getting the first one. But then they can get another one by joining someone else’s group, which switches the layer that streamer is on, and then they can loot another chest. It can give them quite a decent advantage in PvP early on, as Arena Grand Master is quite a good trinket even at Level 60, much less at level 35 or earlier.
This also applies to rare mobs such as Prince Nazjek, or valuable herbs and minerals such as Black Lotus. Abuse of this mechanic will cause exploiters to gain far more gold and sought-after items early on than those who can’t or don’t exploit it. But even for the people that don’t farm these items or mobs, they might still be affected as well. Since there are multiple layers per server, it also means that there can and will be more than one instance of Black Lotus or more than one instance of a rare mob up at any given time, which might just cause inflation of gold for the server. Will this completely destabilize the server-wide economy? No, not really. But it will have a large impact on smaller sub-economies, such as the herb or mineral economies.
There’s a lot of flaws with layering that really need to be dealt with before Classic launches. Many players, including myself, are asking for layering to only be in the 1-20 zones. But that isn’t really layering anymore, just sharding (which they were going to use before in only the starting zones) under a different name.
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What will not be happening is an economic plummet due to layering.
5 nodes farmed by 1 players yields 5 nodes worth of resources. Just as 5 nodes farmed by 5 players.
Adding layers does not alter the supply vs demand. Both supply and demand scale in the same ratio.
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And? I also never would have met them if I or they were in a queue or if the server was simply crashed.
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The whole thing. You logged into the wrong layer.
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Why should I care If haven’t met someone across town? Are they gonna give me 100 gold if I meet them? Doesn’t affect me one bit. I friend people I like running with. That pretty much guarantees I’ll meet them again at some point.
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I dont think the market is that effected in the long term as the value of the items people are going to a mass are only going to have an impact in the short term of the game. Leveling and Pre-MC. After that, Raid gear starts to take over and any items of actual value are still gated behind timers.
Flasks and potions, if people will smart will keep the market up as opposed to dumping them and the over value of Black Lotus is going to be horded and not sold off.
I agree with this. Making friends has always been about meeting people. Even in real life. If you have activities you do on a regular basis, you’ll make friends by seeing the same people over and over. If you only see them once, nothing may happen. But if you bumped into someone 4 times in week, the chances go up. This is why I don’t want layering. It lowers the chance of seeing the same people.
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That makes sense, particularly if layering never went away.
But my understanding is that layering won’t exist for more than a couple weeks. If that’s true, arent we just talking about a very short term undesirable element?
Some people have this conspiracy that layering is a trojan horse. That when the time to remove it comes, they’ll post some dev speak mumbo jumbo to justify not removing it.
And then implement sharding.
And then implement CRZ.
Then there’s also people worried the “time” is going to be so far in the future that the markets collapse beyond recovery due to flooding it with… IDK ore I guess. Argument sounds right on face value, but it starts to fall apart when you remember that gold is still limited in Classic, there’s no mission tables or wow tokens, so all that will happen is the prices will drop. There’s no gold being created which actually blows up the economy.
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allright, I think you’ve changed my mind about layering then
not sure how I missed something so simple for weeks
and how seemingly nobody on the forums pointed it out until this after this thread was made
maybe you should make a new thread telling us about how the economy won’t be ruined by layering
though it has taken me a while to realize simple stuff before
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This is what Blizzard currently advertises the game as:
https://imgur.com/a/ChhciYu
You’re not going to get the game they describe to you here for the first weeks or months. You may be okey with that - you may be not.
Either way, unless you are willing to let them give you a changed game that’s a lesser version of the original, you’re settling for less than you’re supposed to get according to Blizzard.
And that’s not a good deal for you, because you deserve to know what you’re getting into at the very least.
Nor does the current advertisement offer a fair deal to those who wish to receive the game as it’s described here - the game they expect and waited for for several years.
Classic with layering for weeks or months will be not be that game, and therefore not provide the accurate experience to all the people who’re going to check it out.
Up to you if you wanna support this approach of course, but i figured this is something to consider for sure. They may end up announcing layering as a new feature for Classic that will remain for some time, in which case, i’ll take back this post. Until then, it stands.
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I would guess that the main problem with layering is going to be the gold farmers who will abuse it and who will be omnipresent throughout Classic.
True - but queues lower your chance of seeing the same people as well since they (or you) won’t be in the game at all. At least with layering, you will be seeing more people in the chat channels even if you aren’t seeing their characters physically in the game.
I’m hoping that they are exploring options right now to reduce the exploits or coming up with a method to track and suspend those who are exploiting the layering. Blizz does have a good track record of actively punishing those who exploit the game in ways that were not intended. At least they have fair warning and plenty of time to come up with solutions before the end of August.
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because it’s detrimental to the game’s core philsophy even if it only lasts at the beginnning
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I prefer to use the, let the game illustrate the truth, method. Fear layering all you want. I do, however, suggest shying away from people attempting to exacerbate the issue.
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probably about half your server, invisible to you on another layer
Aye. I agree.
For that matter, having the AH flooded with ANYTHING might be nice, since there won’t be anything on the AH at all, and NO ONE will have any money. I’m not much of a comparison, but by the time I got done with the three hours or so I was able to play on the latest stress test, I had 12 silver.
I’m hoping the “high end” cheaters with layering jumps will have those 6 slot bags I need, since I won’t be able to afford the 6 slot bags from the vendor.
Maybe the layer jumpers will wind up jumpstarting the economy …
What I can’t understand is people being completely ok with a system being added into the game at all that’s so easy to abuse.
Blizzard actually broke an add on a while back in retail that made it easy for people to realm hop. Yet they turn around and add a system to Classic that makes it extremely easy to do just that. While you aren’t switching realms, and switching layers instead, the outcome is the same.
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