The AMA made it pretty clear that they intend to remove it by phase 2 and really do expect it to only be a short-term thing. They stated they are ready and able to launch new servers to spread out the population if/when necessary.
This isn’t scary at all, let’s not cherry pick and fearmonger.
There are many things in this world that are scary.
Short-term layering technology in a nearly 15 year old game isn’t exactly among the top contenders.
How did you interpret that to be “complaining” ?
No where did they say they would use layering during the opening of AQ. Stop spreading your conspiracies and read the AMA
Where’s that chicken feed I bought?
They even said they are shooting to remove it BEFORE phase 2, like as soon as possible
Would you prefer “doomsaying”?
Perhaps… over dramatization of minor and unsubstantiated claims?
Because it’s what we do here. We complain, and then complain about people complaining or calling us out on our complaining. So much so that we assume everybody else is complaining, too.
Now stop complaining.
Ok Dawnson…I’ll go with that.
Brockthorn the Doomsayer
Loving. It.
There was something in the AMA that I was glad to read about layering.
We had this long thread a bit back about “bad things you could do with layering” and posted all the exploiting we could do. The AMA listed a few of them and said the code was changed so it can’t be done. I was happy to read that.
Agreed. I had faith they’d do it right, but it was reassuring to hear the specific glitches people had posted about being investigated and fixed.
It is literally not Sharding.
Classic is not even capable of handling sharding at this point.
When they talk about using layering to improve performance in the short-term, they will literally be adding multiple layers of the world to help reduce the massive populations in a small area.
What exactly are the pop caps for a layer? And extrapolating from that, what are the server pop thresholds roughly indicating (what makes a server low vs medium vs high?)
We’re not releasing specific numbers, that will likely change dramatically. Based on the response we got from name reservations, we’re anticipating large player populations for some realms initially. This may change as players switch to lower population realms. We’ll use layers to help improve performance in the short-term if large groups of players cluster in an area. We hope to reduce the use of layering over time as people spread out in each realm.
In case anyone was wondering about the context of this answer. It seems to me that they’re specifically referring to Phase 1, because Pazorax went on to say in another answer:
We’re absolutely committed to reaching one layer per realm by Phase 2.
It could mean that they’ll use layering in other phases for specific events that would cause massive numbers of players to be in the same area, such as the AQ events, but if that is indeed what they meant, then it’s highly unlikely they mean situations like city raids and Hillsbrad battles.
They’ve mentioned “turning off” layering for Phase 2, and they’ve talked about how even during Phase 1, they will be actively monitoring layers and reducing them as necessary to keep the world feeling alive. They have a lot of actual control over it as opposed to sharding, which is primarily or entirely controlled by the server. So it doesn’t appear to be something that would just trigger and move a bunch of people over without warning.
This is further supported by another post that pazorax made that goes into quite a bit of detail about layering and how it works, which I highly suggest everyone who is worried about or interested in it reads, which I will link at the end. But in summary, he explains that layering should only ever trigger if you’re invited to a group by someone in a separate layer (i.e., it won’t happen random just by changing zones or anything). Even if you logout, it now takes a few minutes for you to be removed from the layer you were in and placed in a new one, which both cuts down on potential abuse and makes things more persistent.
Another huge point is that not only is there a delay to going into a new layer, but if you’re currently engaged in or have recently engaged in PvP, there is a significantly longer delay.
All of this to say that although they probably just mean phase 1, even if they’re talking about using layers in specific situations beyond that, they’re making sure that layering does not interfere with world PvP. Even if you’re assigned to a new layer, it can’t move you over while you’re in combat or combat has recently ended (to give you time to loot), and if you’ve recently been in PvP combat, it has to wait significantly longer. Which means in something like a city raid or SS vs TM, you probably wouldn’t even be able to keep out of combat long enough for a layer change to occur.
As mentioned, here’s a direct link to pazorax’s comment explaining layering in the AMA:
https://old.reddit.com/r/classicwow/comments/ct08c7/welcome_to_the_rclassicwow_subreddit_ama_with_the/exi8loz/
This is just speculation, but I think they will remove layering by phase 2. But, turn it back on during updates that draw a large number of players in 1 area (like AQ gates opening)
Lots of level 1’s asking for ports so they can see.
Think…almost every player on that server will log in and want to go into 1 zone.
That’s worse than launch day with 6 starting zones.
That was a total lag fest with lots of disconnects. But I persisted and kept logging back in because…it was the AQ event
Nope, they clearly stated layering will be removed prior to phase 2. (not turned off temporarily) Cease the conspiracy theories, we have multiple Blizzard sources saying the same thing at this point.
That’s nowhere close to what I’m doing.