You have a real decision to make here. Warts and all. We know we do and we know what we want. Layering (sharding) is NOT Classic. You deserve the fans something real. This isn’t what you promised. Classic is a full cohesive world. Not phasing in and out with the whim of a party invite. Warts and all.
You think you know best, but you don’t.
I’d include links but apparently those aren’t allowed
its not that they arent allowed. you just have to participate for awhile on the forums. read posts, give hearts, receive hearts, and then you can start linking and what not. takes awhile
The servers will look empty without sharding after the first week. Guaranteed.
Seeing the seams of different layers / shards is definitely an issue.
Thankfully they’re aware of it and it’s properly considered a bug at the moment.
It’s a beta - give it some time.
I remember how mad people were (including the streamers) after they announced this prior to Blizzcon.
They give us the same with a different name 6 months later and we are told it will all work out.
Amazing.
Forum Mod Edit: This post has been edited by a moderator due to language. https://us.battle.net/forums/en/code-of-conduct/
Sharding != Layering. It’s fun to conflate them and riot about it, but they tackle the same problem in different ways.
I’m not complaining about layering. I’ve said I’m fine with it. But a layer is just a world-size shard.
Now where have we heard that before? ![:thinking:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/thinking.png?v=6" ":thinking:")
Looks at Beta for Azerite
![:cocktail:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/cocktail.png?v=6" ":cocktail:")
Blizzard would rather add layering than deal with repeated lag and server crashing.
That doesn’t phase and only has multiples when needed. Chances are most realms will be down to a single layer, identically mimicking a single realm, in a few months.
world of warcraft is a seamless world, well it tries to be a seamless world. ifyou played everquest you know they handled zones as instances. you had to zone over to cities. zone over to other parts of the game world, like different zones. whereas wow, tried to make it one continuous world. thats the seam people are encountering in the beta. its the same between zones. not sharding, not instancing. this same thing happens on private servers based on wows original code
They already look empty as is with sharding already erm, sorry layering. Shlayering isn’t what we want. We want warts and all. A private server grew in popularity so much. You can’t deny that’s what people want. Warts and all. Halo even had a whole thing with a community modded leaked bootleg project. Which propelled Halo on PC a major focus for them now.
Fans. We.
Us.
Know what we want. And sharding, um errm excuse me again (LAYERING) isn’t one of those wants
I’ve come to accept layering as a compromise for managing a potential problem of servers that have too many people on them.
If the system indeed breaks into two roughly equal layers when the population breaks 3000, then I can see problems for lower population servers. If a server usually has around 3100 people online, then I see no point in have two layers, but if a server usually has 6000, I understand the need.
That being said, the questions of abusing rare spawns and resources, or avoiding ganks is certainly pertinent. How blizzard will handle this is interesting to me. Maybe they could have one spawn of a rare or resource on the whole server, regardless of layer? Haven’t thought it out too much, but that may be a solution.
Anyway, I’m happy to hear thoughts on how to solve the potential exploitation of layers.
Difference is it is recognized as a problem.
What else do you want at this point?
Solution - lock the layers. Join them if/when the need arrives.
Deal with queues or find a new server. Otherwise it doesn’t feel like World of Warcraft. A server community is the biggest part of Classic, and that is completely ruined by shlayering.
That may be part of it, but I think the main part is you DO NOT want to be trying to quest in the zone shown at the bottom on this image:
https://i.redd.it/ybt816o27ow11.png
give a combat debuff that doesnt go away till 5 minutes after you leave combat, that way people cant hop layers to cheat in pvp or pve mid battle.
disallow farming ore, herbs, skins, or loot if you aren’t on your assigned session layer. only can loot quest objectives.
You know what, I shouldn’t even say that because I don’t know the intricacies of the technology. Maybe (and likely) there’s more going on than we know.
Anyway, I think layering is about the best we can hope for. Ion has repeatedly said they want to have as few servers as possible. They expect a lot of tourists. So…this is their solution. It’s better than the first sharding version.
If I could tweak it one bit it would be that you choose your layer on character creation, and then can’t switch to another. You can still coordinate between friends and guildies to pick the same one. But you won’t have people layer hopping. That will be abused. Basically it would be like being on separate servers that are pre-destined to be merged.
Did they que on the private servers?
I would sit in a 4 hour que to avoid a server with layering. Just give me the choice.