No, we aren’t blowing this out of proportion. Layering has essentially the same impact as CRZ on a server community, and the revitalization of community is one of the primary reasons we want Classic. The OPs solution removes the CRZ elements from layering while keeping the merge elements intact.
Also, Blizzard has stated that they’re keeping the server count to a minimum, so I very much doubt that any of the servers will quickly drop to 3000, let alone start there.
Layering in its current form deserves a place in Classic as much as CRZ does, which is not at all.
Im sure when they decided to implement layering as the solution it was only a 30 second discussion and they didnt contemplate alternatives.
Also the beta doesnt serve as a reasonable example. The populations are low and layering is artifically enabled for testing.
I’m sure it wasn’t a 30 second discussion, as I’m also sure that layering wasn’t introduced for the good of the Classic community. It was existing technology that happened to fit the problem at hand, and Blizzard jumped at it because existing tech doesn’t require additional development (ie, money).
And no, the beta doesn’t reflect launch, but the stress tests do and they were a complete mess (not even considering the queue times).
The 30 second thing was sarcasm.
Even the stress test isnt a good example as forced layering occured multiple times to test the mechanism on a large scale.
And layering was developed. Just because it is a similar concept to sharding doesnt mean the existing architecture would work. at all.
This would have been a much better idea than layering. Of course, Bliz would is known for halfass solutions if it saves them money. And its far too late at this point.
Though im not sure why they thought they needed to expand the layer all across Azeroth instead of just the first few zones. Especially since when they get to around level 15-20 each faction has a choice of 2 different zones to level in. Not everyone is going to pick the same one. And most tourists aren’t going to make it past level 30, and they certainly wont be leveling at a rate to keep up with everyone else.
Also, with the given time frame that it will be in the game, it could be months. No one that is going to leave classic in the end will hang on for that long. It makes me feel like they are just conditioning the playerbase to be use to the idea of layering in the game.
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