Really? link?
We haven’t been given any sort of population cap number. Really it isn’t important though. The whole purpose of layering is to allow for populations much higher than the original server populations. The most populated servers will definitely have issues when it comes to removing layering.
At this point, if you dont bring facts to the table, youre just a confusing the issue.
they just wont remove layers if the population is too high to do so
Every sentence from that post is a fact. Do you dispute any of them?
Yea you already tried to bait me with this a few minutes ago bud. Obviously keeping in layering would be a Red Wedding level betrayal of the Classic community.
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Blizzard never actually said no changes. time to get over it or move on, its happening
Actually it is not as easy as you say. Layering will not allow for unlimited populations, that would be counter-productive. Let’s see if I can break this down for people who still don’t quite understand how this works or why it will be used.
Problem: Blizzard expects massive crowds around launch of Classic. Some old veterans will return and resub, some disillusioned retail players will switch over the Classic, and some retail players will simply login to check it out without committing fully to playing Classic full time. Some people are taking a week off work to play constantly the first week. It will be A LOT of people trying to play the first week, perhaps several million. All of them will be spawning into starter areas that were never designed to handle those types of numbers all playing at once.
After that first week, the people who took vacation will go back to work and their playtime will decrease. Others will settle into their normal playtime, mornings, afternoons, afterwork, weekends, etc. Not everyone will keep up with the amount of playtime they put into the first week. Also, the retail players who are just “checking it out” will likely play less and less or go back to retail altogether. The population of each server will spread out in zones/levels and will settle down in their playtime.
So, the first week will have crazy concurrent population demand that will 100% start tapering off at the end of that week and settle over the next few weeks.
Here are the options:
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Open enough servers to handle the initial population demands with Vanilla level populations caps (maybe 2500-300), only to see concurrent server populations drop by end of the first month to ghost town levels. Result is dead servers that lead to connected realms and eventually CRZ. This is the scenario Blizzard is trying to prevent.
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Open fewer servers, keeping Vanilla level populations caps and just let the overflow sit in queues. Those queues will be horrendous, likely measuring in DAYS, not hours. This is a terrible solution that prevents players from playing the game and Blizz will NOT do this.
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Open fewer servers and increase the population caps to handle the initial crowds, let’s say allowing 10k concurrent players onto each server. This allows everyone in the game, but would make the game near unplayable, as all those starting zones can not handle populations of that size. It would NOT be an authentic experience in any way, and in fact would likely break the game.
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Open fewer servers, increase the populations caps to handle the initial crowds, but institute continent-wide layering, essentially making temporary sub-realms that can allow a total of 10k players on the server without breaking the game design, since they will be split up into Vanilla sized layer populations. These sub-realms, or layers, will share name pool, AH/economy and allow people to group, trade, talk or guild with one another.
As the concurrent population decreases after launch week, the layers start collapsing. So if there were 10k players on a server at launch, by the first weekly reset, concurrent demand may be down to 6-7k players at a time, allowing most realms to drop to 2-3 layers. As the next few weeks go by, players spread out, playtimes settle and the tourists leave or decrease their playtime and the population will likely be at a point where a single layer is enough except for maybe during peak hours when queues will be in place.
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According to Ion, they can put 15,000 on a server and it won’t crash. But everyone is going to have a horrible time. The higher server population and less servers is how they’re minimizing dying servers. Layering is how they’re making it possible to actually accomplish anything on those servers.
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I mostly agree with you. Launch will be a huge rush and accommodating it is not gonna be easy. It seems like you even agree that many servers will still require layering long after launch? Does that mean you’re okay with a permanently layered Vanilla world? If you are then our conversation is over.
I think the vast majority of servers will be down to a single layer by the end of the first month. I believe there may be a few that need layering a bit longer (looking at you streamer realms). I believe layering will be completely gone way before Phase 2. If it is not, Blizzard somehow screwed up badly and will pay the price from the community. I don’t think anyone would be happy with layering that goes into Phase 2, and if that should happen, even people like me, who understand and support layering at the beginning, would start making noise.
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At this point all we can do is hope that you’re right. Hopefully Blizzard didn’t screw up badly. I won’t be holding my breath.
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Ugh you’re going to make me go find it, but in that meeting they had in California where the streamers interviewed them? Staysafe was the streamer, they verbally explained that they CANT have layers by phase two because of the world events. They know this, they stated this, no layers by phase two.
found it:
Yup phase 2 will definitely cause major problems if layering is still in the game. The fact is, thanks to layering, when phase 2 starts there will be servers with populations well above a blizzlike Vanilla server. Layering may fix some problems at launch but it will cause problems later, not to mention how it affects the integrity of the recreation.
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Watch the video, you can see clearly just by listening and looking at their faces that they are not evil, money grabbing, idiots out to ruin our experience like so many accuse them of.
No. Please stop repeating that nonsense. Originally they said they were investigating how they could do it using sharding and starter zones. They did not promise anything, because they hadn’t done their investigation. The only promise made regarding layering and sharding, has been that it will be removed within the first few weeks.
I’m a nerd of course I’ve watched that already. I have no problems with the dev team. What I am concerned about is Activision execs having a stronger influence over the game than them.
BTW Youtube links don’t need to be preformatted, and they will embed if you leave them plain.
It wasn’t layering originally. So no layering wasn’t originally supposed to be in starting zones only.
lol Eloraell, I need you 
it’s just the alpha
it’s just the beta
it’s just the release wait til next patch
it’s just the patch wait til next tier
is anyone online?
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