Sick of the Layering posts, Actiblizz? Get rid of it

Layering is happening. Do your best to get used to that fact.

4 Likes

1/10 bait, failure post OP

You only get 1 because I responded.

2 Likes

layering isnt even a big deal, stop freaking out already

2 Likes

I can assure you, it is not. You have drunk of the Blizzard Cool-Aid and believe them when they say it will make things better. Better for them, maybe, but not for us. No one will fall apart if on Launch Day they cannot get in without trying 20 times - you can always try again later when the rush isn’t so bad. So what? That was an authentic early WoW experience. I even experienced it during the stress tests this month. A truly dedicated Classic player will roll with the punches and get in when they get in.

The original Vanilla experience is better than seeing people, mobs and resources pop in and out before your eyes. That is just wrong. Standing next to my friend but being unable to see them unless we group up on the same layer? Not being able to join into an epic battle that is going on because you are on a different layer and never knew it happened? Never knowing how many people are really on your server because you will never see all of them at once? Such a shame…

If this kind of thing truly bothers you, then Classic will probably not be for you. Classic players who want the authentic experience should not be forced to have it watered down so that the (insert Expac here) babies can see the content that they missed. We survived it just fine, they should too. (And for those saying ‘it’s 2019, people won’t stand for anything other than instant gratification’, I bet that you can. Learning patience and delaying gratification for a later, far more substantial reward ‘Builds Character’, so says Calvin n Hobbes’ dad. :grin:) Subscriptions were still shooting up at the end of Vanilla; obviously people weren’t unsubbing because of ‘too many people on the server at once’. If anything, subscriptions were increasing an an exponential rate towards the end, and didn’t stop until after Wrath, when the Anti-Fun Hammer was brought down on us with Cata.

This layering nonsense is just another, small change in a long series of changes that have eventually given us BfA. We want a game different from the Retail version, one that has proven to be far more successful in keeping player interest. Folks that only want to beat Naxx or get Level 14 Warlord will do it quickly and move on, like it was another E-Sport to conquer. Those types never had the staying power anyway to keep them in Classic. Classic does not have to keep ‘evolving’ or get new patches constantly to give people enough to do, like it does in Retail. Retail has no real substance, therefore people get bored quickly after every new patch. Every new patch in Vanilla gave you months or years of play.

Really, layering has no place in Classic. If anything they could eventually merge servers together in a flexible kind of thing. letting people keep their original server name but merge us onto a new, mega server (and still be able to trade and interact with each other, like on your old server) to help keep populations more even. Anything is better than layering. Blizzard really needs to reevaluate this. They run the risk of causing people to unsub forever if they don’t give us the authentic feel to Classic. Letting the masses know they have been heard, and give us the appreciation our feedback warrants, however, will reignite peoples undying loyalty we have given this game in the past, and to the Company that brought it to us. It is well worth it for them to not burden us with layering over the minor hassle of a few months of overpopulation on the servers. The tourists will move on in time, and if they get to experience the game as it should be played, warts and all, so much the better.

2 Likes

To that I say, cya.

3 Likes

I almost started to type a well-reasoned response to your post, but in my experience, anyone who uses the phrase “drink the Kool Aid” isn’t worth discussing a topic with. There’s no discourse. Anything I say is just written off.

3 Likes

No one will fall apart with layering. We will all be too busy leveling and playing the game to notice or care.

3 Likes

Another fail post 1/10

1 Like

On the contrary, layering crying post are fun to respond to. But just remember for those that don’t like layering…

You will only see mobs and resources pop in or out of existence when you swap layers by grouping. It is not like sharding where you frequently see things phase in and out as you’re just running along.

There are times when you will definitely see players pop in or out before your eyes, but this will happen regardless of layering. It has always happened whenever someone near you logged in or out, or got disconnected. When they get lock summoned, etc. Having someone pop into your layer will be indistinguishable from having someone log in near you. The reason they appeared might be different, but the result is the same, and you will have no way of knowing if that person just got invited to your layer, or if they just logged in.

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Layering is a temporary solution that allows Blizz to have a successful launch while ensuring that realm populations don’t death spiral when the initial launch crowd declines.

It’s good that you’re so dedicated, but if you’ve ever popped on the forums (at any point in WoW’s life) when a patch/maintenance causes servers to be down for a longer than expected time, you’d know that the majority of players will be burning the forums down in a rage if they can’t play because they are sitting in hours long queues.

It gets ugly when junkies don’t get their fix :slight_smile: And ultimately, Blizzard is trying to deliver Classic to as many people as want to play it, not just a small group of “truly dedicated” players. Everyone is paying for their sub after all, and no one is more important than all the others.

2 Likes

I can use this same reasoning too. A truly dedicated Classic player will roll with the punches and realize that layering is a temporary nuisance at worst.

1 Like

No.

I was around for each expansion launch, and I am completely against layering. When BC came out, my husband and I waited at Midnight in a long line outside of GameStop to get our expansion CDs, downloaded them when we got home and created Blood Elves at 1am in the morning, when we could finally get on. Being able to experience that kind of unscripted, chaotic bedlam was something I have never forgotton. It got a little crazy with all the people trying to nag mobs at the same time, so we logged off those characters for a bit and went on another alt. So you wait a few hours or days. Big deal.

Big boys and girls can handle a little delayed gratification.

1 Like

Maybe if they did they wouldn’t experience such customer backlash…

We have already proposed an alternative to layering. #nochanges :stuck_out_tongue:

Seriously, though, layering will fundamentally change the game experience. Having it for a few weeks I am cool with, but it shouldn’t be in the game for any longer than that. To say that it is there for ‘a smooth launch day’ is fine, ok, sure. People who will be playing Classic will long into it within the first few weeks anyway, and will get their characters out of the starter zones within the first few hours. Maybe make a few more alts after that. The starter areas will be busy.

After level 10, though, people have many options on where to go and what to do. The population will be more spread out. People will want to start World Pvp’ing. We will no longer have much need for layering at that point.

Someone once made a good suggestion on a video I saw (can’t remember who, sorry) in response to layering:

At launch, have multiple versions of each server, say Server 1a, 1b, 1c and 1d. You and your friends choose which one to start on, so you don’t lose each other. When populations dip, merge 1a/1b, and 1c/1d, then again to its final population as one big server. You won’t lose people, only gain them, and you will never be able to server hop to abuse the server’s resources.

I don’t think you can avoid a dead server down the line completely with layering, but it create more problems than it tries to fix I think. People do have solutions to layering, Blizzard just doesn’t want to do them. More work for them (the poor little overworked dears).

I swear…

#NoChangers are the rivet/thread counters of video gaming.

1 Like

I want layering.

Signed,

A person who played from 04-06, and played private servers off and on for 7 years.

2 Likes

Yeah, those alternatives (and more) have been discussed pretty thoroughly in numerous threads, and ALL of them present problems. People are free to have their own opinions of course, and I can only speak for myself, but after considering the problems Blizzard is trying to solve as well as all the proposed possible solutions, layering seems to be the least bad solution.

YMMV

2 Likes

Me too, and because of that people logging in was staggered. Specifically because it was a midnight release. Expansions/games are all downloaded ahead of time now, and millions of people are logging in during primetime, especially now that launch is global instead of per time zone.

And being 2019, it will never happen again, given what I mentioned above. In the immortal words of Garrosh, Times change.

It has nothing to do with delayed gratification. It has everything to do with the concept of SaaS or GaaS being a mainstream thing. Back in vanilla/TBC, subscription-based online games was a newer concept. Now it’s a mainstream practice. People expect more from it, and rightly so.

Not to mention, Blizzard has probably spent millions, if not billions, in upgraded infrastructure that was meant to decrease downtime. That would be a grossly inefficient allocation of resources if they didn’t use them towards smoothing the login process.

I never thought I’d see the day of people actually arguing in favor of crap service.

3 Likes

That’s a rivet counter for you. They rather see a hobby damaged or tank due cries of “It’s not authentic”

I remember watching a fist fight break out between two Civil War re-enactors. The fight was because one guy’s uniform was sewn together via a sewing machine, the thread pattern was too even for the period.

Button counters are the bane of every hobby.

3 Likes

See this is where I have a probem with pro-layering people.

Your entire beliefs around layering revolve around the idea that subs will plummet after launch and everything will death spiral and no new players will come ever.

None of you have apparently considered that gasp people might actually like classic and decide to stay, or consider that it might be more popular then expected and player creation continues to surge.

Pro layering crowds out themselves as anti classic players who have no investment and little expectation of classic whenever they speak, we know exactly why your pro layering, the wall of no crowd never went anywhere, they just became petty trolls.