Please remove layering past start zones

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
21

This is subjective, layering/sharding made the world more accessible to more people, and more friends could be made that way. Sure, it’s super annoying to see a node disappear right in front of you, or a mob disappear when you need one more for a quest, but overall, sharding/layering made for a bigger world connecting more people, initially. Which it will for Classic even more so because now you’re forced to meet people and group/work together. Eventually, as server pop died and people realized endgame is all that mattered, they breezed through everything to hit max level, so seeing people out in the world became scarce.

It was the other aspects of modern WoW that caused its downfall, like removing socializing, heck basically removing the leveling process, introducing heirlooms and boosts, selling tokens, streamlined class balance and every class/spec only needs 2-3 buttons, and can do everything, etc. etc. etc.

But, that’s also my opinion and you’re certainly entitled to yours.

22

It would be awesome if they offered players a non-layered/sharded realm alternative. I would wait for hours to queue. I don’t care about leveling fast.

The very last thing I want to do is login and play something that doesn’t feel like Vanilla WoW and rush through a game I’ve waited for 10+ years.

I just want my old game back.

2 Likes
23

I don’t know why Blizzard didn’t try layering out in the Beta test so that they can address these problems that come up before the game goes live. Oh, wait…

24

No. :black_small_square:

25

I’d disagree that it helps with this, because having more people available doesn’t necessarily translate into having an easier time making more friends.

Sharding/Layering takes multiple populations of a normal realm size and blends them together.
Unlike a normal realm, which feels like a village where you’ll always end up running into the same people, you’ll instead be in a big city, meeting new people everytime you leave your house. (aka start a new play session)
But are you going to interact with them, and bond with them nearly as much as you would in a village? I don’t think so. You’ll be another fish in the sea, and depending on how many people will leave, remain to be one for weeks or months.

Thanks to sharding, the little version of layering, we already can tell where this road will lead to.
It’s shown already that being connected to way more people, with no guarantee to meet the same ones over and over again in the same world, isn’t going to lead to more and better incentives to form friendships or do social bonding. It’s gonna do the opposite.
And that in a very special time where the whole realm will populate the world as they level together to 60. Is that worth the temporary server health? I don’t think so.

2 Likes
26

I disagree. In the beta, you have less people, so you’ll see less people. Classic forces you to group and socialize. Even if I group with one person in retail, we typically chat and add each other to friends. Imagine when Classic releases and you HAVE to work together with people. It’s certainly going to widen your range of friends and potential guildies.

Temporary? This is for long term health. Dead servers are far worse and that was a massive mistake they made back then, just creating more and more realms. So yes, it is worth it to have layering in the game. And I realize that’s my opinion, but your view is also that, yours.

1 Like
27

Please stop calling it layering if you want that.

You want “Sharding in starter zones”. Layering only in Starter Zones is not layering. Its a fundamental difference.

28

You should just quote the “Oh wait” from one thread in every other one you use it :stuck_out_tongue:

29

I do wanna mention that i’m thinking of the massive amount of people we’ll have on the live servers in the first weeks in my example. I’m aware there’s not so much going on in the beta, but once servers are live (or, on the stress test you could see this too), there’s going to be a lot of people entering the world(s).

During that busy time you can’t avoid to see layering in action (or get layered yourself), because in order for it to work, it will have to shuffle around populations according to demand.
Which means you can’t run into the same people you met in Elwynn Forest when you’re in STV a couple weeks later, unless the layers have reduced to 1 layer, and your fellow players you met in Elwynn are still playing.

I do agree with you that Classic would, based on its original design, absolutely lead to much more socializing and friendships because you’re gonna overcome really cool challenges together. In fact i think this aspect of the game is what makes it so amazing. The whole game is designed around it, too!
However, with layering, during the first busy weeks/months, you’ll not be able to keep running into the same people you just killed Hogger with for example like you normally would.
Your paths will forcibly split (unless you take direct action to prevent it).
Meaning, even when you’re now in Westfall getting annihilated by the same feral bird in the same spot as the guy is you met at Hogger before, you may have no idea your fellow Hogger slayer is there getting pecked on too, because he was put into a different layer that time he logged in.

That’s why, in my opinion, layering takes away the opportunity to strengthen previous social bonds even further without any extra effort from either side to make that happen (you’d have to have add him as friend, and inv him to your group to end up in the same layer at all times).
During leveling these situations are gonna happen a lot, and if layers aren’t collapsing down as quickly as planned, chances are much of your journey will not consist of meeting other adventurers on the same path over and over again unless you go out of your way to make it happen.
I think it’s essential that it’s very effortless to meet the same people in the world consistently though, to make it as easy to socialize as in the original version (without layering), not just with a select couple of people, but with your whole realm so you can form a realm identity, and have meaningful longterm social impact on that particular realm community.

The reason why i see this as just a temporary measure, is because once layering is taken out after some weeks/months, we’re back to square 1 where realms are completely free to die off over time again. For the same reasons as they’ve always done.
Which then again, will lead to the same old measures (merges) to “fix” these issues with, that layering prevents only shortterm, by not letting a realm community properly form to begin with.
Also i just wanna say, i totally agree it’s just our particular opinions here, which may be different, but i think both are valid viewpoints!
I just figured it’s good to add a bit of explanation where people like me are coming from on this issue :+1:

2 Likes
30

Just by nature population will eventually die off, and layering will be removed, which then we will have stagnant realms with (hopefully) a decent active population on each, and then the static world that everyone is clamoring for. But I am going to take the initial layering as an opportunity to meet as many people as I can and hopefully garner some new friends, and perhaps an active guild. That’s why I’m looking forward to it.

Oh I completely understand, I am not trying to come off as argumentative and I apologize if I am. I like healthy discussion as well. :slight_smile:

1 Like
31

You’ve never participated in a WoW beta before, have you?

They could just do that in the first place. Why ruin Phase 1 with sharding only to use the appropriate steps to fix population issues once Phase 2 comes around?

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32

Because if they are right about tourists and launch with regular pop caps and no layering the problem will not be fixable.
One can always work with having too much people but having too few is a different issue.

33

But… if they’re going to have regular pop caps, then offer realm transfers to lesser populated realms, why not just do that in the first place?

How would the problem of overpopulation become “not fixable” just because we don’t add sharding?

If every realm is going to be overpopulated, then the tourists leave, wouldn’t you be left with decently populated realms across the board?

In the event one is especially underpopulated after the tourist migration, how would free transfers to that realm from overpopulated realms not solve the issue?

2 Likes
34

Because 80% of the players will “self-select” not playing any more, before they need to.

35

This is exactly what they are trying to accomplish with layering.
Having heavily overpopulated servers in the beginning while allowing everyone to play and when the tourists leave the layering is removed and a healthy population remains.

Without layering the cap is around 3000-3500 concurrent online and go imagine what happens when 70% of those people aka the “tourists” leave you are left with around 1000 people on a server aka “dead realm”.

It’s a game of maths if you can cram around 12000 people in using layering and 70% of them leave you’re left with around 3500 aka “healthy realm”.

36

Honestly, layering should be removed past the the starting AREAS, not the starting zones. There is a huge difference.

Layering in Northshire Valley = ok.
Layering in Elwynn Forest = not ok.

1 Like
37

Jasperlode mine without layering sounds like 45 minutes of C A N C E R

38

It would solve the issue.

But without layering we’d be left with every realm underpopulated when 80% of 3000 people left each of them, because they’d have to have opened far too many realms to avoid long queues.

1 Like
39

According to what data?

And if the tourists are just going to leave and the end result is that we have a bunch of decently populated realms with no layering and no need for transfers or extra realms, why not just not do layering so the tourists leave sooner?

Not really. Layering is going to hide how populated a server really is and mitigate the effects a high population would have, then hit people with a brick when they remove it.

Players would spread out more evenly across the realms if they noticed the queue for one of the realms was 20k people.

That’s only the number of people online at one time, though, and you have to consider a 3000-3500 cap also doesn’t include the several thousand in queue in addition to that.

How could there possibly be huge queues if 80% of people leaving is going to result in “dead realms”?

The cognitive dissonance is real.

2 Likes
40

Because that would put US in the 30,000 player queues just as much as the tourists. It’s not like they’re wearing a yellow star saying “Tourist”. Blizzard doesn’t want long queues because that would be seen as a failure at launch. Additionally, Blizzard wants to capture more tourists if they can. They just aren’t confident of it.

And if the queue for all of the realms was 20k people? If 3 million people turn up to play 50 realms, that’s 40,000 people trying to get into every realm if the values are perfectly even. You’re only allowing 3000 on at a time, so every realm has a queue of 37,000 people.

Because to avoid queues for 3 million people, they’d have to open 1000 realms. And then when 2.4 million of them leave, we’re left with 600 players on each of those 1000 realms.

You’re ignoring each component when you focus on another.

  1. Blizzard doesn’t want long queues.
  2. Blizzard doesn’t want to open lots of servers.
  3. Blizzard expects multiple million people to turn up.
  4. Blizzard expects the majority of those players to quit within a few weeks.

Please provide a solution that isn’t Layering, that solves ALL 4 of those problems.

1 Like