Because its 2 months out, and this is the only solution anyone (including us) came up with that satisfies their goals.
Fixed that for you.
Yeah, go ahead and delude yourself into thinking the people who want no changes are a minority. LOL
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The extreme purists are. The people who want no changes to the game play but are happy with invisible layers, are far more numerous.
I think it’s more accurate to describe those folks as people who would prefer not to have layering but aren’t going to quit over it.
There’s an obvious distinction between wanting no changes and quitting if there are any changes.
Few people are happy about layering.
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Yes. And they’re far more numerous.
More numerous than what? You might want to read what I actually said.
I never mentioned quitting over any changes, merely that the majority of people don’t want them.
The op completely misunderstands the purpose of a beta.
Its to do these types of exploits so blizzard can counter them.
Layering isn’t going away for the first few weeks of classic or till phase two.
If you don’t like it. Tough.
It’s going to be around for launch.
In a perfect world Classic would just have a $60 buy in and seperate sub. Then retail tourists wouldn’t be a problem and would could possibly get a launch that doesn’t leave us with a bunch of dead servers.
Blizzard is dead set on retail having access to Classic though. Like it or not, layering is the best way to insure we don’t have a bunch of dead servers a month after launch. Having a limited number of 3k capped servers with 12 hour queues not only drives away potential new players, it drives away vanilla players, and pserver players would just stay on pservers.
I’m not sure which of the ideas you read. But the whole point of them is that the “layers” aka realms are locked. They are basically like normal realms, except that they share the same namepool, so if a merge down the line is required due to balance the population, these realms can get merged without name issues popping up.
Each realm, just like any other time in WoW, has it’s own playerbase and own world etc. No sharing of any realms, no sharing of resources, nothing like that.
If there’s 2 realms say 2 months in who both have a very low pop (unlikely but okey) they can get merged together easily if necessary. Both have had the same chances at resources and so on because they are all their own, locked worlds.
The idea is that by choosing this way, people can form communities as the original game design supports them to do right from the beginning, and only in case of emergency dropoff the low pop realms can be merged very early on while everything is still fresh, reducing the damage on the community and the games authenticity.
With layering, unless population drops very quickly (which i can see many people would like classic to do, which is quite sad imo) you’re not gonna have the same chance at all at forming a normal realm community, and bond with the players on your journey to 60 due to the reasons i explained in my post before.
You’ll be playing a fundamentally changed game potentially weeks or months in, only to then end up with big queues (if pop is very high) and for the rest of the game (2 years?~) you’ll once again be back to the old server population management tools like server merges in case of emergency. In the rest of the games lifespan, chances are, as always, that players are going to leave some low pop realms in their wake as they do and move wherever they feel like.
I am not paying to buy a game i bought 15 years ago.
Than paying a 5th sub.
That’s not an option.
Agreed, but from a business perspective, the shared sub and not requiring to buy the game allows them to cross-promote their games.
I don’t think it will be very effective, though, seeing as the two audiences have very different desires for what should be in the game.
Someone who enjoys BfA likely won’t enjoy Classic, and vice versa.
Well, it’s a different game, at this point. Unless you think you were playing 1.12 during vanilla’s launch?
But I understand the contention with being required to buy Classic.
Yeah, I read them. This is what I am saying, Blizzard and all of us expect a pretty high turnover rate. This is why they are doing layering. I don’t think they have said how many layers they intend to use, but lets just use 5 as an example.
With layering, you have 15k players spread across 5 layers. When the server drops down to 12k players you can cut out a layer. Ultimately there are only going to be 3k players that stay out of those 15k. (I know these numbers are wrong, just using them as an example. A 3k server would probably have ~10k unique active accounts)
Under the examples you posted, you have 5 individual servers with 3k players each. Only 600 of those players are expected to stick around on each server. You end up with the same problem. Until the servers are merged, those 600 players have an entire server to farm by themselves, and will be able to do so longer.
Layering can be phased out faster. The moment server populations drop under 12k, you could drop a layer. With dedicated servers, you can’t do that. If they lose 3k players, each server would still have ~2400. A, that isn’t that low, and B there is no way to merge 2400 servers without creating big queue times for players that previously did not have them.
Ultimately, dedicated servers get to farm with less competition longer than layered servers would be able to.
Classic doesn’t come out for another 2 months, It’s not possiblke to have purchased it 15 years ago. My guess is you bought World of Warcraft 15 years ago, you can already play that, they are on the Battle for Azeroth expansion.
Lol, good lord man. You are paying for 4 subs, but the idea of a 5th is appalling to you? O_o
But this is still entirely avoidable using the base of this idea.
If there’s a realm with such low pop as you describe, this realm (again, very early on) could be merged into a realm which would have the space needed to accomodate these players.
Be that a realm that’s medium pop taking in the low pop realm to make it a high pop realm, or 2 low realms which merged together would make a healthy medium realm.
I will give you that this approach will require manual oversight on Blizzards part, because they’d have to check fluctuations within those realms, and decide which ones are worth, or necessary, to be merged together to achieve a healthy realm after potential tourist dropoff.
It costs more effort on their part, but again, their goal is to recreate the game as authentically as possible. To do that, they have to have their priorities in order to allow that to happen.
If those priorities for Classic are authenticity and appeal to their core longterm audience (which they’ve stated they’d be), then this approach would allow them to stick to those priorities, while still giving them easier management server wise to make sure tourists don’t leave a couple dead realms in their wake after they drop off.
Also, all this is assuming that tourists will actually drop off as badly as currently they assume, and that the core audience left is not going to be massive.
Both of which are guesses, and could turn out to go completely the other way around just as well. In which case, there’d be plenty of healthily or even high populated realms, which could even ask for extra realms to be opened, and barely any realms would need any merging to begin with as it’d only be an emergency measure in case of very low pop realms.
imagine playing wow 13 years ago with layering/sharding… no one knew anyone hardly. Guilds were formed based on folks you met while playing the game. With layering/sharding you dont see 2/3rd of the player base so you have groups that dont meet in the beginning times because they arent able to see each other.
An MMO is supposed to be and MMO, we are all on a server together for a reason, not to have a crapshoot whether we happen to join the same session as another group.
If the player limit is 3000 per section, and 3001 people join that server, does that one guy play all by himself?
You are missing my point. Assuming we use 3k server caps and 5 layers or servers per server group…
This is what servers would look like at launch
Layering/////server groups
3000 ////// 3000
3000 ////// 3000
3000 ////// 3000
3000 ////// 3000
3000 ////// 3000
Let’s say after a week they drop down to 12k players.
Layering/////server groups
3000 ////// 2400
3000 ////// 2400
3000 ////// 2400
3000 ////// 2400
------- ////// 2400
More quit, now down to 9k players
Layering/////server groups
3000 ////// 1800 (3600)
3000 ////// 1800 (3600)
3000 ////// 1800 (1800)
------- ////// 1800 (0)
------- ////// 1800 (0)
You could potentially merge 4 of those servers in to 2, but you are going to create pretty long queues, and you would still have a low pop server.
Now down to 6k
Layering/////server groups
3000 ////// 1200 (2400) (3600)
3000 ////// 1200 (2400) (2400)
------- ////// 1200 (1200) (0)
------- ////// 1200 (0) (0)
------- ////// 1200 (0) (0)
If you merged server groups at 9k, you will be at 2400/2400/1200. If you didn’t you can merge to that, or take it to just 2 servers, 3600 and 2400, again creating large queue times for one of the servers.
The point I am making is that it is easier to reduce the number of servers by using layering. In both cases, you can expect each layer/server to start with 600 players that will stick around. With layering, that number increases each time a layer is removed, increasing the competition that the dedicated players have with one another on each layer. With server groups, some servers will have to stay low population longer, which means that those 600 players have longer to free farm rare materials.
Agreed, however most MMOs aren’t given away to players of another MMO to try out for a week or two before quitting. Blizzard has stated that the vanilla era servers caps were by design, and they want to stick with that. The alternative to layering is having hundreds of servers that are dead within weeks. In which case you wont see all the players you will be playing with because they will be on a completely different server.
Of course blizzard has also stated they don’t want hundreds of servers, so in reality you would just have a limited number of servers with ~12 hr queues
While it hasn’t been confirmed, it is believed that that 1 character would be in a queue.
No, no you won’t even if you truly wanted.
Classic…is…vanilla.
You classic is a new game folks need to stop this nonsense. It makes you look bad.
Classic is a museum piece. Nothing more nothing less. It’s not new content. It’s not new raids or bosses or npcs or quests or any. What it is is a nostalgia piece for the fans.
I bought vanilla 15 years ago. I don’t need to buy the same game again
So I will get FF7 for free when it comes out? Nope, I will have to pay for it. Classic is having to be rebuilt on the new infrastructure. It’s not even Vanilla, it’s vanilla being emulated on the legion build. You don’t own anything other than the right to play on the servers they give you access to. They could pull the plug on WoW tonight and that purchase you made 15 years ago would entitle you to nothing.
And museum’s cost money to visit. It’s a moot point anyways since they are giving it away, but they have spent over a year rebuilding “Classic”, and it will cost money to run the servers. The idea that charging for that work and continued cost is a slap in the face is ridiculous. Playing this “i bought vanilla 15 years ago” nonsense reeks of entitlement that this modern generation is so full of.