We aren’t claiming a death spiral. What I and others think is that there will be a very healthy population (that will likely grow over time) once the tourists bounce. However, by releasing too many servers at launch, this healthy population will be split over these servers and will make for a lesser long term experience.
The best part about layering? If the tourists pack up and leave quickly, layering will be gone even more quickly.
It’s almost as if every server launched within the past 7 years has experienced that same “sub death” that they’re foreseeing for classic.
Weird that they’re trying to prevent something like that.
When you plan systems, you don’t plan optimistically. You plan realistically. Realistically, as many people will rabidly tell you, Classic is not for everyone. The influx of people basically just trying it out and never making it past level 20 is going to make up a significant portion of the initial population. That is objective fact.
The population (not subs) may not plummet, but it will significantly affect server communities if Blizzard does not include layering and opens a ton of servers with standard population caps.
If this is the case, I’m confident they will open new servers for those people to migrate to, just like they did in Vanilla.
No, you are just so blind in your vendetta that you can’t fathom we want the same things. We just have different opinions as to the best way to make those things happen. I don’t want layering. But I know it’s the lesser of all evils when it comes to how to handle the initial “tourist” population at launch.
The worst part about layering?
If tourists don’t leave we have it forever.
That or they turn off layering in p2 as promised and we have mega servers with 10,000-15,000 players on them.
Vanilla launch started small (relatively) and subscriptions grew throughout the life of Vanilla (and TBC). I believe a couple hundred thousand launched with Vanilla and that grew to around 7 million by the end of Vanilla. Someone feel free to correct me if I’m wrong on those numbers.
That being said, dead servers were a thing in Vanilla. Not all of them, by any means, and it got much worse in later xpacs, but some realms died even while WoW was growing.
the other issue is that even during WoW’s growth, they did not retain every player. So pretending that every person who loads up Classic on day 1, or week 1 is going to stick around and play a lot is a bit pollyanna.
What is expected to happen is that all the old veterans coming back, private server players and people dying for Classic will be joined by huge numbers of current retail players at launch. Retail subs grant access to Classic, so if there is a BFA content drought, many of them will check Classic out. This creates HUGE demand during the launch window, but all those people won’t stick around. Some might quit altogether, but others may simply play Classic now and then when they’re bored in BFA.
I hope Classic is more popular than expected. But Blizzard will probably have a good idea of what to expect from early character creation and 15 years of subscription metrics, so I am in the corner of hoping for the best, but preparing to handle the worst.
If the population remains high than more servers will be needed, and queues should be implemented. Moving into the future with multiple layers of world bosses (and similar situations) will not be good.
I’d also wager to say people who are hardcore anti-layering didn’t have to recruit for raiding guilds on backwater servers prior to server transfers opening up in Vanilla.
Can someone explain to me what’s so horrible about layering…?
There are definitely some downsides to it if they are not addressed properly by Blizzard.
These things should hopefully be avoided by some sort of limitation on layer hopping.
People are upset about layering for two reasons I can gather:
Has Blizz confirmed that players can swap layers, and that they will “disappear” from view if they join a group? Just asking for proof of these claims, one month out from Classic officially launching (we are still in Beta and stress test).
As someone who has accounts since Beta. Here are the actual numbers to do with as you please. There where 89 ( thank you for the correction and I have added servers that where missed Thanks Eloraell) servers at launch according to the server timeline. and Blizz recorded just over 200,000 sales first 24 hours. In the first 24 hours they recorded just over 100,000 players. So if they where evenly distributed (I know they never are) that about 1123 players per server. Now if we look at current numbers estimated to be in classic this could easily go over 1-2 million first hour trying to login and level.
Source: wowwiki.fandom(.) com /wiki/Timeline_of_the_creation_of_US_realms
www.digitaltrends(.) com /gaming/world-of-warcraft-shatters-sales-record/
Good analogy because I hate mosquitoes with a passion
Sure. But nobody is going to build a space station in order to escape the planet to avoid mosquitoes.
Realistically the best thing to do if you so passionately hate layering is to just wait it out. Abandoning Classic because of it is about as extreme as abandoning the planet because of mosquitoes.
I don’t want layering either. But in my experience in the beta it’s very hard to notice. It’s an acceptable compromise especially considering how short lived it will be.
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Looks like they got rid of it. The posts I mean. What is it about California that inspires mob mentality and squelching opinions?
The community did that. Blizzard merely provided a means for the community to do so. So if by “they” you mean Blizzard then no.
Unfortunately it can be abused. But that’s what we have. Can’t really blame the community for growing tired of layering posts.
Yeah I don’t buy that. Overwhelming opinion is against layering. Even if the community did do it, that just proves my point about mob mentality
I wasn’t aware that the same 20 people repeating the same talking points is an overwhelming opinion.