Open Question: An Alternative to Queues?

If your realm was experiencing one-hour (or longer) queues during peak play times every day, would you want your realm temporarily increased to two layers, to shorten the queue?

I would absolutely approve of dynamic layering or even layering staying full time for the larger servers. Having a queue of 3+ hours (current whitemane estimate, but likely going to be longer as people are parking alts logged in) is anti-playing the game (any version of wow). A 3+ hour queue on classic will make me almost never log into my retail account. I’ve had to dip out of my raid group on retail in the past due to these queues and now that they are back, It’s going to be extremely hard to switch back and forth as I’ll be stuck in classic.

How do you think that would change your gameplay experience?

The only thing that I actively see layering used for for is World Buffs, Black Lotus, and specific world spawns (Twilight Lords in Silithus). Whitemane’s population is already so bloated that trying to time/compete for these on a single layer is incredibly difficult already. A second (or more) layer allows for more relaxed playstyle - resulting is less stress focused on logistical tasks outside of gameplay and more enjoyable experience. I have to log in HOURS ahead of a 6pm PT raid in order to make sure I can make it with queues - and many others are doing the same thing - not playing, but afking to not be hit by the queue when they are schedule to actually be part of a raid group.

Really it’s a retention mechanic that if kept in the current form will result in continued churn of our raiders, guildies, and from a business perspective subs to the game. By allowing queues back, that friction of should I play or not goes way up - and every time queues happen we see people churn from the game via game quitting.

The Massive servers available in classic are already a huge change form the server cap size with vanilla - trying to keep them #nochanges is a change in and of itself due to the limited resources artificially placed (both in game and queues).

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