The Layering Scandal

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
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Is it a scandal that layering exists?

Some would say yes. I do find it interesting that Ian said that the main reason they are taking it out is world bosses don’t make sense with layering. You can only have one, he said. That is true and a good reason…but shouldn’t the main reason you want it out because it is antithetical to Classic WoW and is one of the primary reasons players want Classic WoW to begin with?

Are the developers so naive or do they believe WE are dumb enough to let it pass?

Layering is merely sharding 2.0. Those who argue against this are puppets, mere white knights for Blizzard. You know, those guys who lurk the forums waiting for any post to pop up that says anything negative or critical of the game in any way. There is no denying that layering is sharding, even developers of called it sharding in the Tips interview.

So why another thread on it?

https://www.reddit.com/r/classicwow/comments/by8wyk/this_is_what_getting_layered_will_look_like_in/

Check out that thread/video where a player shows you sharding/layering at work. Next, ask yourself why this is existing in Classic at all?

Better yet… I made this thread to ask a few questions that EVERYBODY should be asking. Even if you are PRO-LAYERING, you should wonder…

Why has Blizzard not come out with any comments or updates on the layering issue?

Why are no streamers talking about layering at all?

Why did Blizzard swap from “figuring out something to handle launch” to “goal is to remove layering by the END of Phase 1” (2-3 months+)?

If you are a thinking person you will quickly realize there is almost NO WAY the answer to one or more of these questions isn’t a flat out scandal.

I propose one of the following or multiple are possibly true. I am left to come to no other conclusion since Blizzard, only 2 months away from release, remains silent on this issue AS DO ALL STREAMERS mind you!

Possible explanations…

  1. Blizzard is being pinched by Activision. They are being forced to save money and alter the experience. The good guys at Blizzard, then, are trying their best with what they have to work with and find a compromise. The lack of Public Relations in the matter is them avoiding this as best they can since they know the community hates sharding.

  2. The streamers are either paid off or strongly encouraged by Blizzard to withold negative feedback. Failure to obey this will result in an effective /ignore from Blizzard from upcoming events or promotions.

  3. Streamers are not encouraged or threatend by Blizzard to stay silent on sharding 2.0, but they decide to do so in unison because they are all greedy as hell and know that Blizzard would look down on negative feedback on this. They are fake.

  4. Blizzard is totally ignorant of how much the community hates sharding and/or the ramifications sharding will have on gameplay. They are naive enough to think that many neckbeards won’t manipulate the system to level faster, gain more resources, and destroy the economy and game experience.

  5. Blizzard knows full well how it will harm the game experience, but doesn’t care.

  6. Blizzard knows it isn’t the best solution, but knows of no better solution. They are stuck trying to figure out when it is best to pull the plug on this abomination. Alongside this, of course, must also be the fact that in order for them to feel this way and this be true — they must also be totally inept at public relations and dealing with the community. The community is left to react (as I am) because we feel left in the dark and are worried about them ruining the gameplay experience.

I believe a combination of these are possible and true.

I would give as much grace as possible and lean towards the idea that Blizzard is incredibly inept at community relations and/or they just don’t care about the community enough to provide prompt feedback on their thoughts & plans in regards to sharding 2.0.

Conclusion
Sharding 2.0 (layering) is set for classic. Almost no information on how it works or how they plan to try to make it work has been released. Even though everyone in the community leading up to Classic Beta & Classic News was terrified of sharding being in the game no streamers are discussing it or mentioning the ridiculous layering experience on Classic Beta. Many posts and much feedback has been given explaining in detail why sharding 2.0 (layering) is a bad idea and bad for the game. Effectively no response from Blizzard has came and we are just 2 1/2 months out from launch.

TLDR: Blizzard silent on sharding 2.0, streamer silent on sharding 2.0… This is scandalous. It seems as if this is purposeful and coordinated.

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I’ve argued this issue to death so I’m not going to do it again here. Instead, I’ll just pose a question.

What is your solution? What would you suggest Blizzard do instead of implement layering for release?

I think we can both agree that Classic is probably going to see an insane amount of people at launch, much more than Vanilla ever had - so how do you mitigate that without layering?

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My solution is simple: Blizzard should give a DEFINITIVE end date for layering. It must be much sooner than “the end of phase 1” which destroys server economy, phase 1 gameplay, and the entire leveling experience.

2-3 days, at worst 1 week. Guarantee me that layering is gone in a week and I shut up and say “okay”.

The problem is there is no promise of that and it almost seems like they are leaving a little tad bit of room for it extending. They originally said they wanted to handle launch, now its all of phase 1…what?!

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They probably don’t know. No one knows how many people are going to play at launch, and how many of those people are going to still be playing after the hype dies down. They’re going to wait until populations normalize and then make the call, they’re just predicting that it will be somewhere in Phase 1.

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FTFY.

/moo :cow:

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They never normalize. I played retail vanilla and all private servers. It is always fluctuating in different ways.

Launch until AQ will be STACKED and PACKED. This is the trend. This is what will happen.

After AQ servers dip off and new servers (should) are launched. People reroll. Are you going to put layering on those also for the explosion of people?

The only time a server dips in pop is at AQ. This is historical fact.

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I naively chose to think it was because they might still think about not using it at all. Then again, looking at how we ended up here…Well…

I’m a bit out of breath about the issue atm. I need a break because i’m seriously disappointed and disheartened that Blizzard can’t treat their own most successful, loved games with the dignity they deserve, and people like us have to keep reminding them to do so for the benefit of the game, themselves, and it’s loyal community who loves Vanilla/Classic for what it was, warts and all.
In the meantime, thanks a lot Shocknyou for putting up these strong reminders for Blizz. The forums will not be kind but it doesn’t matter. It’s clear as day this is not what the people were asking for over all these years.

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You explain to me why both blizzard and all streamers are silent then chief?

So let me get this straight…

At Blizzcon Esfand gets up in anger and asks about sharding…but now doesn’t mention it at all…

In Classicast they talked for months about how sharding is a deal breaker…but now they don’t mention it at all…

yea…OKAY…nothing to see here move along…

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In the example above, it looks like the better solution is to have people who join a full layer roll over into the next one instead of kicking people already there onto a new one. You should never “get layered.” Basically feels like CRZ if done like what is shown above, which the vast majority of players seem to hate for that exact reason.

Oh look, ore… Oh look, it’s gone. Never fun.

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I’m so tired of this line of thinking. Back in 1.12 or whatever patch you want to talk about in Vanilla there wasn’t tens of millions of potential players waiting to log into a fresh server and start playing. So it’s not going to be just like Vanilla when I played Vanilla I didn’t have to compete for mobs or camps spawns and that’s exactly the way I want to be when Classic launches. If you want to form groups that don’t talk, because they are just trying to get through a quest then by all means fight against layering, but I hope they let the players choose layered servers because I don’t want it to take three or more hours to finish all the starting zone quests.

Do you know how many people will be playing classic in the first three months? Blizzard doesn’t and I don’t think anyone actually knows. So why would Blizzard carve a non-flexible plan in stone only to have people throw it in their faces if the numbers of new players continue to raise well past the promised layering end-date?

Seriously you found a way to work streamers into this?

I hate not being able to play the game as close to how it was back in Vanilla and how do you know how much of the community actually hates sharding or layering? Did you carry out a survey?

Abomination? Really? If the implementation of layering is transparent to the player would it matter if it’s there or not?

Based on what evidence? All you have is your imagination.

There is no sharding.

And yet here you are saying the sky is falling because of the lack of information you have.

You do not know everyone or most or a significant number of the community so how are you making such a bold statement. I don’t care what they do as long as it doesn’t negatively affect the game. And since you don’t know what they plan is how can you say people are terrified, really you picked that word?

Why do you keep saying sharding? When there is no sharding.

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How about we get rid of it altogether soon after launch. By soon I mean a few days not months? This very system is one of the MAIN reasons retail WoW stinks.

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How can Blizzard put an exact date on it? And how you know it will destroy server economy, phase 1 gameplay or the leveling experience?

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I think initially it’s the best solution we have. Nobody can predict exactly how long everyone will stay. This is just a situation they have to play by ear. Setting exact dates and hard cutoffs could make more problems instead of solving them.

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What if there wasn’t anything to talk about? The absence of evidence is not evidence of something. Unless you have something solid to go by why are you creating a post based on how you feel rather than something real?

You don’t like sharding, well I’ve got some great news for you, there won’t be any.

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Why do people act like there is a problem in the first place? We dont need layering, sharding, etc. Literally just release the game.

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Did you play on the stress test beta? It was a terrible experience. It literally, and I mean it just like that, took me 90 minutes to do the first three kill quests. I had to stand in one spot and wait for a mob to spawn so I could try to auto attack it faster than people running around trying to tag mobs. It sucked and grouping up only helped slightly. No one in the groups I was in said a word. I tried to see if people needed help after I got the mobs I needed, but they didn’t have time to respond and most of them dropped group as soon as they got what they needed anyway. It was nothing like the leveling experience I had in Vanilla back in 2005.

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Classic WoW Media Summit Interview w/ Brian Birmingham, Patrick Dawson, and EsfandTV (4:17 minutes in)

There you go baby boy. I helped you out. 5 seconds of your time look it up on youtube. The devs THEMSELVES call it sharding. If you can’t discern the truth. God help you.

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I experienced a very different story. I was talkative, grouped up for everything, and had a very fun time. Obviously every quest took longer with so many people around, but it was so cool to see everyone do stuff and crowd up the places. Made a friend just by goofing around during quest downtime.
Different priorities, i guess. Time flew by for me. Looks like it didn’t for you. The game during that stage just was an MMORPG at a “launch” like situation.

Maybe that’s not something for you then. Not sure the game has to change for preferences like this though, seems to fit the audience of it’s genre already especially with a big crowded “launch” like that. Many people love this stuff about MMORPG’s.

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Nice bs… O wait did u learn this from Pservers???

U know why they died of?? Because they opened up FRESH servers at the time AQ opened. Take a look at ND now is it dead"??? NOO

And it’s alrdy at naxx!

Because there is no fresh.

Good example of some one that doesnt know sjjjt

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In stress test 2 I experienced sharding 2.0 and saw almost nobody the entire time. I saw mobs fade away from me. It felt awful.

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