This right here. To know (or to find out later) that something fun is happening on your server, but you can’t join in or even see it… or worse, being randomly removed from it at any time is extremely discouraging to me.
I’m not paying to play the game for the game itself; I’m paying to experience the world with other people. There are far better single person games out there.
I joined the stress test on one of the “high” pop pvp servers (there were 2 when I joined). Once I got out of the level 5 area, there were very few people. Once I got to the Barrens, the world was dead.
I forced myself to play until level cap, but it wasn’t fun. If it goes live in the same state, I simply won’t play; even if it was free, it’s not worth it.
I’m hoping I was on the server that they set layering to super high, for testing purposes. Maybe they can find a sweet spot, but…
The main reason I despise retail is because the world is empty of other people. Why would I support a system that brings that same problem to Classic, for however limited an amount of time?
I’ll take the queues, the competition for mobs, over a bland, empty world.
Aside from people attempting to exploit the system (and yes, they need to make layer changes far more of a hassle) those groups should be fairly stable.
Also, as I’ve said multiple times, making people enter a rested zone to change layers would be a good way to hide that dissonance, because in a rested zone people logging out also simply “disappear”.
No this will happen naturally. Think of all the players on a realm. Think of all the guilds those players are in. Think of all the friends each of those players have. Think of all the players they meet that they might want to play with after. Think of all of the vast types of player interactions in this game. Every single one of these has a chance of mingling with another layer and being transported away from their current one. There’s no way you will be unaware of this happening in some way or another during the first week.
And as I’ve said multiple times it’s a bad idea. For someone new to the game or a returning player this would be very confusing. If you were nowhere near an inn this would be extremely annoying. If you needed to help your friend urgently for some pvp or rare you would not be able to. Please drop this idea it’s worse than all of the current exploits that exist because at least we can ignore those.
If you wanted to stop exploits just mix layering with sharding making 1-20, 20-40, and 40-60 zones overfill into separate layers instead of the same one. New players wouldn’t notice the change and it would solve all the problems layering is meant to solve while also getting rid of exploits and community issues. That way someone wouldn’t be able to go into a high level zone and duplicate items by joining all the low zone layers.
Again, as I’ve said to you, your argument is two-faced.
You’re arguing that we shouldn’t make layer changes a hassle, while claiming that random layer changes will make people quit. Its a clear indication that neither argument is valid and you just want to attempt to shoot down any fixes to layering so you can justify the “not going to happen” demand of removing layering.
Layering will happen. There’s no chance at all that it won’t.
If people don’t get on the track of fixing the exploits by making layer changes more of a hassle, all the problems you claim to dislike will exist.
We’re too far gone to drop layering at this point, so either work on solutions, or get out of the way.
It’s simple. Think about some reasons why there are people that are not interested in those activities in retail but are looking for them in classic… There it is your answer.
Apparently you didn’t even read what I said because I’m literally suggesting to keep layering but divide it into smaller regions instead of continent-wide so it won’t be exploited.
You don’t fix a problem by adding worse problems. You can fix this issue fine but you seem to be ignoring my suggestion (which is literally keeping layering just shortening the areas).
What you’re essentially demanding is that they turn layering into sharding, which is a worthless system and has helped to ruin any sense of community in retail.
It isn’t super important what the explanation was because the reality is differently according to the last stres test feedback. Is it due to bugs or the vague explanation is irrelevant too because the fix window is tiny.
Wait, you were serious? Why didn’t you just say “I want sharding!”. Because that’s what you’re proposing, since to get from 1 starter area to another, you have to pass through higher level zones. Wetlands is not a level 1-20 zone for example.
The reason I don’t call it straight up sharding is because this is much more on the layering side. The specific way you divide it isn’t as important as the fact that it should be divided in some way. There’s not really a good reason to have someone in Eastern Plaguelands in the same layer as someone down by Booty Bay and just promotes exploitation by giving more layers for people to choose from and split communities.
Instead of splitting it by 1-20, 20-40, 40-60 you could do North Kalimdor, South Kalimdor, North Eastern Kingdoms, and Southern Eastern Kingdoms or just based around general traffic areas that Blizzard has the data to. And unlike sharding these areas would be merged when population is low enough to fit the players in the same layer so you wouldn’t get the same phasing issue from sharding.
There is no downside to this besides very minor phasing issues when crossing the points and Blizzard can specifically pick where that is to be the least jarring since they are wide regions instead of each zone. And even then this phasing would only happen when the population is overpouring and extra layering is needed. Having them split like this would keep the communities appearing more like a realm because you are going to be layered with people in your region instead of someone across the continent nowhere near you.
Call it whatever you want I don’t see how traveling to another starting place and seeing some phasing matters. In your example of traveling starting places you would be traveling on a boat anyway so you wouldn’t see phasing in that section and might see some phasing going from Wetlands to Dun Morogh but I fail to see how that’s a problem?
Wouldn’t having 0 people phasing in the middle of a zone be better than a few people phasing on the edges? I fail to see how you calling it sharding makes the actual suggestion irrelevant?
People worry that layering will be abused to get rare spawns, valuable gathering materials and used to avoid or get away from pvp(as seen by streamers abusing it this exact way.)
They also worry that blizzard is a liar and won’t actually remove it or won’t remove it for months.
I would like to see blizzard commit to removing sharding on a very specific date (let’s say September 26th so one month) and I would like for them to turn layering off in zones over level 40.
The whole point is to make it less jarring and avoid seeing people disappear to another layer. It should not be easy, in the middle of a field, or without intentional awareness.
if that’s a reasonable, relative comparison in your eyes then you’re going to allow layering to sabotage your entire classic experience, in which case I don’t know why you’re debating about a game you clearly won’t be playing.
Having it limited to only happening on crossing the border where little gameplay happens is way better than being able to intentionally exploit where you use it or unintentionally have people phased away from you constantly while playing mid zone. It’s going to be extremely jarring having layering because it’s filtering players constantly throughout a whole continent and you seem to think it won’t. I wish I could hand you a crystal ball to see the future because there’s no mathmatical way this won’t happen for you a ton while playing.
Not only does it look less jarring it also solves all the exploits and community issues. Yet still you seem to reject it all because of some naive stance you refuse to budge on.