Is it possible that I have 5 friends playing on my server in whatever zone, but they are all in a separate layer and I won’t see them? Assuming a server will have 5 layers or more in this case. But then I group with them and boom they are now visible?
Seems to be better then seeing players phasing in and out constantly and will allow for servers with 10k+ people. But it’s close to the same technology where there are people next to me that I don’t see.
Will chat be layered? Will I be able to see chat from people in the other layers so I can get into that pug UBRS a bit faster? Will I then be stuck in their layer and not be able to see my other friends from my first layer?
Okay that’s fine but you will have a full server population on your layer anyway if it’s still around.
You can possibly even have a friend on another layer which also has full server population also looking for UBRS pug and you just join the better one.
But be fast since like I said tourists will be gone fast and with them goes layering.
We definitely need a Blue post. They probably still haven’t finalized exactly what the exact way it’s going work, yet. Probably won’t until after both of the stress tests. So not until July!
Can people stop using terms they don’t understand, because your use of shard here makes no sense.
Assuming you are not in a party. Yes, you and your friends could be on different realm-layers. I highly doubt we’ll see more than a few layers per server. Ideally, from what i’ve gathered, is when you invite them to join you, they will swap to your layer, yes.
I would assume the chat to be cross-layer for each zone, which would allow finding groups easier and allow people to group to complete harder quests, etc. but yeah a dev post would be nice to confirm.
It depends whether they want people to jump groups or not. And whether chat or presence is how people make friends. Remember that the population of any given layer is roughly equal to an entire realm.
I never once said that I was a Blizz Developer, just stating that your use of
“sharding” didn’t make sense. That and “sharding” is originally a programming technique to improve databases, not a game-design feature.
Honestly, I hope Blizzard keeps a tight lip with the inner workings of layering. No details proved at all.
By the time players figure out some method for gaming the system Blizzard will already have a fix in place. Before it gets out of hand content phase 2 will be on top of us.
Realistically though, layering will happen seamlessly enough that the masses will never see it. When people do see it it’s only for a second then it’s gone. It won’t be firing off around us like murlocs respawning in Elwynn Forest.