There are alternatives that have proven the test of time. FF14 still relies on locking creation and enforcing queues. It’s more popular than BfA and the population is evenly distributed across all realms. They have expansion surges just like WoW, only bigger.
I don’t really buy the argument that we should just accept layering because Blizzard thinks it’s a good idea.
If you are defending layering then why? What makes it such a great solution?
Might want to fact check that claim.
Ques are bad as well as dead servers once the large influx leaves.
Layering is a way to help manage that in the end.
Again, fact check your claims. Looking at character count for each game your claim is WAAAAY off.
Because this question totally could not have been asked in the other 50 layering threads amirite?
Not that I’m the biggest fan of Bfa as it’s been burning me out hard, but citation needed on this one.
As far as the core question of the post goes though, I defend it because I’ve been through failed launches on games that i’ve looked heavily forward to on a massive scale before. I would prefer to play on launch, not spend days trying to beat the login boss. If that means I don’t meet all 8k people who make a character on my server in the first couple weeks, that’s okay with me. Really.
FF14 locking people out of the game (if that’s what you mean by that, I don’t play the game so have no experience with it… do they really do that?) being a better solution I’m sure is very subjective and dependent on if you ask somebody who is in game enjoying content, vs. if you ask somebody who is locked out and not able to play.
Because these are better options than a system that lets everyone who wants create their characters and not sit in a queue for hours…amirite?
(yes I understand that layering is more for solving the dead server problem than eliminating queues, but it does help solve the hours long queue problem too).
Because it is temporary. They’ve already talked about only using it during phase one. Layering keeps them from having to merge realms multiple times due to population fluctuation. It is a Temporary solution that has far less impact over the course of six months than any other solution I personally have seen the community come up with.
At the end of the day, if you don’t want to experience layering, just wait until it’s no longer being implemented.
-> The same argument was said for everyone who did not want sharding but said they would “rather wait until the initial burst is done” to start playing the game.
Looking at this from the perspective of “We are a company, here to make money and provide a service”
It makes more sense to let everyone have a smooth entry into the game and have a few people wait until layering is gone, than it does to have people write it off as “Un-playable” at launch and have to keep merging dead realms months later because 50% of the initial population is no longer active.
I am not pro-sharding or pro-layering, but I respect the decision as it has been made.
FFXIV introduced cross server play before the expansion, though. It’s just as spaghetti as the rest of their netcode however.
They just released a game changing expansion. The population also exploded in WoW when BFA was released - and every other expansion. And as someone who has played FFXIV since before it was ARR off and on, and actively since mid-Legion, there are massively dead worlds and completely full ones, much like WoW, which they’re trying to avoid with layering.
Yes, they lock character creation on worlds (servers) that have hit a maximum cap. However, with the exception of launch, I have not seen a time where there’s been a complete lockout for character creation, there’s always a world you can make a toon on. They also have queues on full worlds. They also use cross-world for several different things. They have implemented a system that works.
The point of layering is to try to mitigate dead realms as much as possible, which it seems to be a problem for FF14 as well.
Classic isn’t going to have content patches or expansions that constantly brings people into the game, either.
What Sabetha said.
You don’t agree with the solution because you don’t agree with or refuse to acknowledge the problem.
The problem is the conflict of future dead realms with giving early players a good play experience.
The “simple” solution to player experience is more realms, which is directly in conflict with the future dead realms issue (which is ALSO about player experience).
So, that’s a non-starter. Repeating errors of 15 years ago is not a good plan.
All of the cries about “community”, “immersion”, “exploiting”, much less the calm reasoned concern of “ruining the game”, are vastly overblown. Layering will have NO IMPACT on the game long term.
The amount of players inconvenienced or “disturbed” by layering in play is the smallest of small fractions of the population. Most people won’t notice. Those that do notice won’t care. That that do care won’t even be impacted beyond the idea that seeing a complete stranger fading away is somehow the Worst Thing Ever™. An unreasonable response.
So.
I defend layering because, despite not being particularly invested in Classic myself, I want to see it succeed long term for the players, for the community, and for Blizzard. We can’t have “too much WoW”, so having Classic available to everyone is good thing. Having Classic available to everyone, and VIABLE is even better.
Layering will Go Away, and even then nobody will care – it will just silently vanish one day. And none will be the wiser that it was ever there in the first place.
A far better solution to anything else that has been proposed.
I like you Piddy. You have a good brain.
Damn Piddy, you may have just worded it the best way that any of us could have. Thank you. If I could give this post a hundred likes I would.
Because people believe that it’s temporary and that it’s better than the other solutions
It doesn’t matter if it’s worse than the other solutions and that it might not even be temporary, that’s what they believe and nothing will change their minds
How about repeating the success of 15 years ago?
Vanilla WoW did not succeed in its first month. People who came after Dire Maul was released did not see a “ruined game”. People that came after Black Wing Lair was released did not see a ruined economy. People that came after the Gate open were still able to raid Naxx with their new friends.
Layering won’t hurt any of this.
It’s currently not 15 years ago, according to my watch.
This is unequivocally false. Check the stats on its overwhelming growth. However, the servers did crash frequently - but that’s an engineering flaw not a design flaw.
Any of them able to be developed and fully tested in a month and a half?
If it’s too late for Blizzard to correct their mistake then that’s a shame - however, defending the blunder because it’s become inevitable is absurd.