Blizzard has mentioned many, many times that layering will be removed before or right at Phase2. Apart from wanting it to be removed for the sake of a vanilla WoW experience, there are some key reason why layering does not work long term in Classic WoW. One of those reasons is world bosses and I believe this is the main reason why the goal is to remove layering by Phase 2.
Whether you participate in world bosses or not, the goal for Classic WoW is to recreate the game as close as possible which was why layering was implemented instead of phasing. However layering does not work like Phasing. The layer you are on is across the entire world, it is not isolated to a zone or city like phasing is. Meaning if layering was to stay in the game during Phase 2 and continue to work as it does there would be potential for duplicate world bosses. Or if they changed layering to not affect world bosses that would require a nightmare of layer hoping to search for and do world bosses.
Okay so big deal, they just remove layering. Well on some servers that might not be a big deal now, but on many that would still mean world bosses(and many other aspects of the game) would be near impossible. Especially Kazzak for example.
If Phase 2 is released similar to how it was in vanilla WoW we should expect Phase 2 by November/December. Do you feel the population will decline enough by then? And even if it does, how many people will come back for Phase 2 just like any other new content release in retail.
In retrospect, releasing twice as many servers at the start and merging servers as time goes on would have been the better play. But here we are. I feel Blizzard really needs address the overpopulation on all servers before discussion of Phase 2 release date can really be had.
7 Likes
They definitely dropped the ball. Layering should have never existed - so what if starting zones are packed for a couple days. People have already abused layering to its fullest, including inside dungeons and raids, and I doubt even 5% of abusers were punished for this. Spell batching is garbage in its current state. They were SOOO confident they had enough servers to start with for people to reserve names, now there are a handful of mega-servers that canāt possibly exist without queues by the time Phase 2 hits if they keep layering in the game. They also decided to open realm transfers extremely early on, making faction imbalance way worse than it was at the start. Iām sure there are several other things that warrant complaints, but those are the major ones for me. They really shot themselves in the foot.
13 Likes
no, layering needs to be removed asap so those that decided to stick with full servers even though they had the options to move and then more options to move and then even more options to move. pay the price.
5 Likes
Honestly? I donāt see the numbers going down enough for this to happen naturally, even with free server transfers off EVERY high pop servers to low pop or brand new servers.
I might be wrong, but unless 3/4 of all people playing WoWC quit in the next few months there simply arenāt enough servers in place to even out the concurrent logins to keep the player totals per server at a sub-3500 (The max player capacity during the initial launch) level.
I have no idea how itās going to be handled, but I just donāt foresee the playerbase as a whole undergoing this change of heart that will need to take place that results in people agreeing to voluntarrily move off the high pop realms before layering is removed.
My suspicion is that blizz will have to bite the bullet and pull the lever on one of three situations, none of which are going to play well for their fans.
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Force server transfers for the excess playerbase on high pop realms without the permission of the players.
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Delay Phase 2 until most players are bored and the subs drop dramatically.
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Initiate Phase 2 with no layering with the populations as-is resulting in MASSIVE queues that will dwarf anything weāve seen to date for literally EVERY server with large numbers of characters online.
As it stands I think #2 is most likely, #1 would create the most backlash, and #3 would be the most effective.
EDIT: PS - With situation #3, people who are on servers that register as even "Mediumā right now would probably have to wait for hours at a time to login and also result in MOST active players on a server resorting to anti-afk bots or keystroke methods to avoid going offline creating an arms race between players and the developers to combat each other.
Itās going to get ugly.
6 Likes
Well said! Very thoughtful and articulate. 
Servers are over populated. Players are upset. Classic is officially dieing.
Is it feasible to in some way to make layer hopping come at the cost of not being able to go for the world boss on that layer? Or would that be just as much of a nightmare?
The problem is that when they allowed free transfers off realms that are 30% alliance and 70% horde, most of the people transferring off are alliance, rather than only allowing horde to transfer off, so the balance is only getting worse, and in the long run those servers are going to be awful for both sides.
5 Likes
They are definitely in something of a pickle, I will give you that ā¦ IF we donāt see an exodus of tourists. We just passed the first month. If at the end of month two the current participation count is holding ā¦ then holy crap, lol. Classic could just end up being way more popular long term than they thought was possible. Guess weāll see how it plays out.
1 Like
removing layering wontā increase queues. from everything iāve heard layers just spread the population between layers. it was done to spread the initial populations out so we didnāt have over a thousand people in barrens at the same time.
that said, layers will also help people at 60 on full servers. having 3500(if thats accurate) in farming zones will be a tight squeeze with some areas likely hard to camp 1 npc spawn without sharing it with a few other people.
lets not even get into trying to farm nodes or things like devilsaurs. supply vs demand on top of everyone in same layer trying to farm will all be a mess. one layer isnāt enough to supply a full server.
reason i think layering should be removed. i could see a lot of people transfering once layering is gone.
of course thatās all assuming pop doesnāt drop like a rock by phase 2 anyways, its lasted longer than i thought but the newest retail patch did its job on that.
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Yes. We know. Everyone knows.
I get what youāre saying, but at the current 3500-ish people per layer now, even on high (Not even full) pop servers the capital cities look as packed as Iāve EVER seen them back in the day.
Are you suggesting that they can or should multiply that player density by 2-9x and also increase the respawn rates of every resource node and creature on the server by that amount? Iām not computer game designer myself, but Iām pretty confident that would be literally unplayable. Certain streamers have already launched big 1000 vs 1000 player wPvP conflicts that have crashed an entire server and that conflict itself was largely taking place all on just 1 of the 5-9 layers that exist on that server.
I dunno man, I donāt think that the game would even be playable if there were literally 5k characters running around in Orgrimmar at once.
3 Likes
It seems like they are already scaling back on layering. Could be coincidence but for the last week I always log in to the same layer as my wife which never happened in the first weeks after launch.
I initially thought this too, but I donāt think itās the case. Look at the wording in this thread:
The fact that Kaivax specifically mentioned worse queues when layering turns off makes me think it will affect server population caps and thus queues.
2 Likes
i think they should but i think iām a bit vindictive towards the playerbase that kept asking for something to be done and then most never doing anything when they got what they wanted. so i may be biased.
everyone had the option(to start on the new servers and then to transfer) and anyone with common sense knew what was coming if pops didnāt crash hard.
blizzard just needs to pop those paid transfers up and remove layering. again, i may be a tad biased here.
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well, thank you much for that reply. that used to be my assumption but kept getting told otherwise. thatāll teach me to believe what others say when they show no proof.
just remove layering, its bandaid, that have to go sooner or laterā¦ blizzard cant really do anything about people choosing to pile up on certain servers, dont choose a full server !
Aye, Remove layering
Dynamically priced server transfers based on faction population vs opposing faction pop probably not a bad idea either
My main concern is that even on Medium pop servers(there are no low pop currently) will still greatly feel the impact of layer removal. We have to remember that a medium pop server now is twice as big as a high pop server during original vanilla.
1 Like