If Blizz sticks to the Vanilla standard of approx 3k cap. Then yeah. It’s pretty obvious that when 10 k people try to login on a 3 k cap, there will be a queue of 7000 people.
Maths
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Why are you linking to an article that doesn’t talk about layering? There are blue posts talking about it.
https://www.wowhead.com/news=294589/blizzard-clears-up-layering-tech-misconceptions-in-classic-wow
Each layer has a fixed number of people, no? Isn’t that the whole point?
Layers are each their own full size vanilla realm.
If a realm has 3 layers each with 3k online players and you remove 1 layer and now make it 2, you’ll have 3k more people waiting to log on to one of those two layers, increasing the queue.
You don’t have to change the offline cap, the online cap changes with layers added or removed.
That’s how it works.
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This.
Layers were created for multiple of the reasons mentioned here. But, more as a side effect to the population problem than original intention. Their real purpose was to increase server capacity, while preventing the need for:
- Additional Servers
- Dealing with server merges and name conflicts when servers become too dead because of making too many servers originally in hype time.
Once the layers are removed in phase 2, and if there is still the same amount of people trying to log in then as there is today… the queue will be insanely large.
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Blizzard wants your experience to be limited to the number of players roughly equivalent to what a vanilla server was, since that is what the game was designed to accommodate. Each layer is approximately that number of people.
While “server capacity” is on its own merits separate from the number of layers, players can only be on a layer. If a layer was limited to 3000 people, and there are 2 layers active on a server, that would mean there is a cap of 6000 people, even if the “server capacity” is 50,000 or whatever they want it to be.
They increased server capacity at some point after launch to help with the queues, and clearly those people were placed on a layer. So the server capacity is not a fixed constant.
While server capacity and number of layers are separate things, they are related for obvious reasons.
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I remember during vanilla days, it was said each character would consume ~8 MB of RAM for the actual server. So, given modern server host capabilities… even 128 GB of RAM would allow for 16k people… and 128 GB of RAM isn’t very much these days. Server capacity in terms of the capabilities of hosts is irrelevant anymore.
That’s the server cap. They upped the server cap recently which allowed more layers to be made. Layers are set to have so many people. 3k on 3 servers doesn’t mean only 3k on one server when layers are removed. If that were the case then there would be no way to remove layers unless 10% of the current population stays and the rest leaves.
There’s definitely always a way to remove layers. Just do it, and then the queue rises. Hence their strong warnings originally to get off high reserved named servers originally. Won’t be pretty long term.
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Right. Unless Blizzard comes out and says what they have or haven’t done, who is to say that they didn’t just adjust both at the same time. Perhaps they reset the max number of layers and the max number of online players back at whatever the original numbers were when the game launched a couple of weeks ago.
Edit to further clarify:
I’ve keep seeing these long drawn out arguments about whether X is a function of Y or whether Y is a function of X. And I’m not sure why it really matters to so many people when at the end of the day Blizzard has the ability to adjust both X and Y at will. So maybe they have recently readjusted one or the other or both and the result (perhaps) is longer queues or reintroduction of queues on realms where they had previously reduced or gone away.
These are mega servers even before they increased realm pop. ‘Low’ servers are already at much higher populations than vanilla. So, to answer your question: yes, that’s exactly what I am saying. Layers were added to reduce the server load on a specific area of the game, not to control the overall population of the server.
They are in fact reducing the population caps in order to get a lower number of players per server before layering is removed in phase 2. They even specifically said they were going to lower the population caps over time for that reason.
While you could change the number of layers without changing the server cap, they are in fact reducing the server caps and it is related to layering.
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They literally talk about overcrowded zones and competition for resources in the interview you’re linking:
Just raising the realm caps without any additional tech, at some point you run into not just client-server performance issues but raw gameplay issues, in terms of contention over finite spawn points in a world where mobs tap to the first person who hits them.
When you have 800 people in Northshire Abbey, 2,000 people in Northshire Abbey if you can imagine that, that’s a miserable experience for everybody all around. So those are the problems we’re trying to avoid.
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Doesn’t this suggest the opposite of growth then? If low level zones are empty, it suggests there aren’t a lot of new players joining the server
Yes, and layering is directly tied to raising the realm caps. Increasing the maximum during the first phase without layering would have caused all sorts of problems.
When they drop layering by phase two, the realm caps will be back in line with vanilla levels.
Layering is directly tied to higher realm caps, and would not be even in the game if the population max was the 3k or so vanilla had.
That would be sharding, not layering. Each layer is a full continent with a vanilla-like population (roughly). Blizzard developers have specifically stated that layering is in place to maintain the long term health of server populations.
Honestly, I think we’re all actually on the same page, but arriving there through different means.
tl;dr: Server populations are higher right now in phase One. Layering is the reason this is possible to have more people on a server and maintain a level of players around you similar to vanilla. Pull the layers, and either the queue skyrockets when the server cap is brought to vanilla level, or the cap remains and now we’ve got 10k people in the world at once.
Wrong!
…
It’s not server capacity that’s the issue… it’s the capacity of the game world. It’s not designed for 10K. That’s why everyone is on a world layer of about 3K.
When the layers are eliminated the max concurrent players are going to be about 3K per server, even if the server could theoretically handle 100K
I’m pretty sure this is incorrect. From everything Blizz has said, layers generate dynamically. It’s its own system.
I don’t think any of us know what the actual server population caps will be.
You’re correct that layering and the population cap aren’t directly connected. However, they did increase the population cap with layering in mind. They will reduce the population cap when layering is removed. The world simply can’t handle that many people.
Nah winterspring was all mine mostly on Monday but since Tuesday I can’t go anywhere without seeing people
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