haha. Oh my god. This response is so off. I do not remember in mid 2005 that people were talking about the game folding. You, Grudio et al, that exist just to troll vanilla players take the cake. You guys accuse people of being drama queens yet talk like 2004/2005 was a horrid experience you never want to live through again. I don’t believe you played during this time give your above response. If you did you’re just trolling at this point.
2 Likes
And yet, I can prove I did, while you cannot.
2 Likes
Vanilla launch was par for the course of MMO launches of that era. Being that of a diaster. Server issues lag issues queue times over population. Anyone who played at the time will remember the looting bug. There was a reason WHY we got so many free days of play time.
Most people were used to that for mmo launches they are hardly the well organized things we get today.
1 Like
Baibai don’t let the door hit ya ![:slight_smile:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/slight_smile.png?v=6" ":slight_smile:")
goooooo red sox!
Lets keep in mind of what Layering is really for. Its not for login issues nor servers crashing. Its so that if and when players leave a server, the Layers can combine smoothly into a singular server. Everybody is present on that server in different layers still capable of fully interacting with each other. The problem we are looking to solve though is Layer Hopping.
5 Likes
The way I understand layering is on one server you have several instances of the open world, the entire open world. Layer1, all of the open world. Layer2, all of the open world. Vastly differing from zone “layers” or actually shards.
No and yes. Login issues and crashes is a part of it as well as the merging,
Agreed!!!
1 Like
This pretty much. I strongly suspect many just want unstable servers to be real problems, but at the end of the day if the game is good enough, people will suffer to have it. Its one of the biggest reasons I dont listen to anyone who says that a game failed due to servers. Unless the servers LITERALLY DIED and were unrecoverable, then it really doesn’t have a ton to do with a game living or dying.
1 Like
It’s actually continent layers. So EK and Kal are separate. But they are also separate instances as it is now too
Only fix for layering is to have people chose which layer they want to log into after they select the server. And dont let them switch during play and lock them to that layer at least for a day unless the queue is too long for the layer then let them chose some other.
Edit:
That way if I want to wait 3 hours in queue to join Asmon Layer then I can. People can’t just hop between layers and server won’t randomly move people to layers. You only play with people on your layer, it’s isolate from other layers, until the big merge comes.
All this automated moving of people between layers is immersion breaking and introduces lot of exploits.
2 Likes
I would not say a day. Part of the advantage of layering is that you can play with friends in another layer. The lock does need to be significant enough to limit abuse, but also still allow people to play with there friends consistently.
So he gets into at about 14 minutes in. He shoots down merging static layers and offers three objections. 2 are easy to deal with. The third is subjective and is a big issue if we are talking about merging layers several months/years into a servers cycle (but we aren’t)
-
Economy (solution link the AH between the layers on one server)
-
Names (solution share names across one server)
-
Community merger (becomes a huge problem if you merge months into the life of a server but Blizzard wants to consolidate layers early in the game cycle before phase 1).
2 Likes
I became skeptical when he had skarm on talking about prot warriors duel wielding bosses in naxx.
I’m less against static layers than no-layering, but I do think there’s a good justification for variable layers. Basically, the faster you can remove layers the better, so if we have 3 static layers with 500 players each, we’ve gone too long with Layering.
That’s why I still feel like one of the Layer Hopping restrictions should be entering a Rested Zone in order to avoid being able to jump directly to where you want to be.
1 Like
His suggestions at the end I agree with. 1-2 weeks max. Only in starter zones if possible. I think those would be reasonable compromises.
Agree - for less crowded servers, it would make sense to merge the static layers sooner than on very populated servers.
I think it was a decent video, i didn’t expect to see him address layering as an issue at all at first because he praised this approach so much last time i saw him.
I’m surprised though that he checked out the forums, but he still used an alternative solution example from way back in november, when we’ve been here trying to come up with better alternatives in the meantime.
Given all the down and upsides of both, i genuinely think this is a much better deal: (neither are perfect, remember, but really what’s preferable and more like Classic? up to you):
From my understanding, and that in no way means my remembrance is right, the layers will all share the same AH and you will not be able to have the name of anyone on the same server no matter what layer they are on.
So now that I’ve been through the entire video I’ve got several problems with it.
-
His statement about games living and dying by server stability. This is a load of garbage. A lot of games fail now because theyre mediocre copies of other games. If a game is good enough, people will suffer through bad servers to play the game. The statement he made about this is pure ignorance.
-
Overspawning is not equatable to the other 2 and has nothing to do with layering/sharding/server merges/login que. The two do not solve the same problems and was pointless to even list.
-
He demonizes server merges and makes them look worse than they are. Firstly he says “When servers merge, who gets to keep what name?” Yet fails to understand that if all versions of that server share a database of names then the issue simply never exists.
In addition he uses an example of server merging as “two cultures clashing” and references stories about issues with it. This is an incredibly insulting and underhanded way of discrediting the idea since the stories hes referring to reference communities that have had lengthy time to develop. Following the same system as layering and merging after 2 weeks would not allow this to occur.
The only downside is auction house fluctuations and I strongly suspect that complaint to be overblown. Better 2 weeks of 4 servers and mixing numerous connessuers vs having a few people dominate the market by exploiting layering.
Lastly, the suggestions he provides have already been given in some form or another. He is essentially just regurgitating information he’s heard and decided to repeat regardless of whether or not it’s bad information.
At the end of the day, half this video is a recap and the other is poorly constructed opinion and misinformation.
Ultimately layering is going to be in the game because blizzard wills it, not because its a good idea.
8 Likes
I COMPLETELY share this opinion!
2 Likes