A lot of people are concerned that the increased server populations will cause a problem with high-demand resources in Outlands. The response to this is usually speculation that layers will solve it… but it wont, because the layer system doesn’t work that way. The layer system doesn’t care about resource rates, it only cares about player population on that realm & in a zone… but players behavior is dynamic & reactive, so population is not a simple linear scaling variable.
Let’s take the easy example of elemental plateau. At lvl 70 there are not that many reasons for a large number of players to be in Nagrand other than to farm this area… however this is a small area with only ~30-40 spawns; an amount that could be farmed to saturation by as few as 5-10 players.
Now lets be generous and assume people are desperate to farm primals so there aren’t 5-10 players there, but rather 50. This puts it well beyond saturation but as mentioned, people are desperate. Well, 50 players in one area is still nowhere close to forcing an additional layer.
And here’s the problem; any additional players beyond those 50 that show up will do one of two things;
Add to the masses, making it 51, saturating the spawns even further, eventually causing at least 1 of the first 50 to start losing tags on all new spawns & decide ‘its just not worth it anymore’. That player will leave, and it will be back down to 50.
or
See a whopping 50 players farming already, decide it isn’t worth it, and leave back to Shatt or some other zone leaving the server load unchanged.
The result in both cases is the same; no new layers created regardless of how many people actually want to farm these mobs, because when players see a farming location saturated… they dont stubbornly stay in that area long enough to trigger a new layer.
No matter how big a server is, the exact same situation plays out. You could have 50,000 people on a server … but if 100 players saturate a farming location, only 100 of those 50,000 will ever be in that location.
As for solutions? I could rattle off a handful of them, but that isn’t the point. You can’t get a solution to a problem until it’s recognized as a problem, which classic devs refuse to admit. We saw it with pre-fixed black lotus which took prices of 400g+ each to compel action, and it’s just going to happen all over again if nothing is adjusted to compensate for inflated server caps. It’s a problem that will continue be unique to classic because of the higher server populations, thus not an original TBC experience.
dynamic respawns based on region population where any more than 50 players in a region increases spawn rate; if elemental plateau has 100 players then double the respawn rate. Maybe cap it ~300%.
add permanent layers equal to the size the population cap was increased by (if pop caps are 3x the size, make 3 permanent layers)
dont hate this, but number of active players on a realm fluctuates so i wouldnt wanna be on like the 3rd layer of a low pop realm that has 3 other people lol
Two options when employed together would eliminate most layer exploits. First, place all gathering profession skills (mining, skinning, herbing) on a 10 minutes cooldown upon switching layers. No one would switch layers looking for resources to gather unless their current layer is so overpopulated it would be worth waiting 10 minutes.
Second, have a count down prior to switching layers unless you are in a capital city. You can join a group and play with them, but you have to wait 2-5 minutes before the layer switch is executed. If you are located in a capital city you have the option to immediately switch. Engaging in combat of any kind pauses the countdown while in combat. This will remove the ability to escape pvp by switching layers. It will also make it less rewarding to switch layers while grinding mobs for drops.
My understanding of layering was that it does not work on a per zone basis but a per continent. So, each layer, to my understanding, will have a ‘separate’ Outland.
I dont believe thats the case. The original reason for layers was a lot of players starting in the same areas, and layers were removed as players dispersed around the world.
You are fundamentally misunderstanding how layers work. Layers are not decided on a per zone basis, they are based on total server population. So if there are 3 layers, there is enough room for 150 players in your 50 player example.
It’s not as simple as the number of players online. The number of players in a region/zone is also a factor. A server with 5k players could have 1 layer while a server with 2k players that happen to all be crammed into one region could have 2 or more.
If 1,000 players travel together to one place to farm the same thing, there would be added layers purely to alleviate server load… but if those players arrive over time, and nearly all of them change their mind & leave because it’s already too farmed by 50-100 players then you never get to 1,000 and therefor never get any added layers, which means no scaling resources.
Exactly, that’s reaffirming my point … we will never get those added layers people think will solve the problem, because we will never get enough people committed to one area to trigger the layers.
When players have a choice to either be somewhere overcrowded/laggy or go somewhere else, they will usually go somewhere else. When the game launched everyone was forced into one place, they had no choice, so layers were added until players gained choices as they gained levels.
With farming locations its all about choice; what to farm, when to farm, and whether to farm with competition… and there’s a limit to competition before people stop trying to farm something. That limit is nowhere near high enough to compel layers, no matter how many players there are on a server.
So we are getting a lot more players with the same resource supply, and layers will never be triggered to compensate. That’s an indirect “change” blizzard caused to the game. It’s been a problem since day one, which they couldnt ignore for black lotus, but never bothered to figure out a solution to the dozens of other resources this affects.
In TBC it will be a lot worse before it gets anywhere near normal. Be prepared to see ludicrous prices for herbs, ore, primals for months… not just because of inflation, but because theres simply not enough on one layer to go around.
Where are you coming up with your numbers? 50k on a server? 50 people farming the elemental plateau?
Classic was busting at the seams at launch, sure… and when lockdowns happened, it was crazy then, too. However, things were pleasant (on my server, at least) in between those times, and since I came back a couple months ago, things have been pretty chill. TBC will level out.
They could cap each layer at 3,000 characters, instead of the 5,000-6,000 they’re capped at now. People would screech about it though; people will screech about any solution to any problem.
I would be happy if they capped it at 1,000 people per layer, Hellfire Peninsula is still going to be crowded as heck. At least since they added the cooldown so you can’t exploit layer hopping like they did on Classic release.
layers are NOT triggered by how many players are in a given zone, they are triggered by how many players are online. during launch blizzard used a lower player per layer figure to account for the rush at low lvl zones. All blizz needs to do to address TBC issues is once again use a lower player per layer figure.
