I keep telling myself the same thing Razaell. I keep hoping that Blizzard will prove me wrong, but I don’t expect it unfortunately.
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I hope I’m not lumped into this intentionally, I’m sure blizzard would announce a ghost server being merged into another. This isn’t the housing market where 98% of people live paycheck to paycheck. This is a game’s market where its much easier to make 80-100g in an hour regardless of the server you’re on.
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As I said, at least in the context of the Beta, Blizzard wants to test layering with a tiny pool of players. For their own reasons they don’t want thousands of beta testers. If I had my way, they WOULD have enough players to fill out multiple layers. But it is what it is.
The upcoming stress test will hopefully be a better representation of what live will look like. It seems they’ll do whatever they can to prevent dead servers, regardless of how it messes with economies.
Edit: The reason I’m even here is because the OP claimed they lied to us and that they’ll use Layering when a server has even a tiny amount of players, making many dozens of layers when they originally only intended about 3 per realm. He’s using the current Beta to back up those claims, but we already know that in the Beta they are testing many layers with a very small pool of testers.
Tell you what, if the game launches and there’s dozens of layers for each realm, I’ll happily eat crow. But from everything we’ve been told, it seems like it’ll be roughly 3 layers per realm, without about 3000 max each, and will be gone by Phase 2.
So you’re arguing why we’re using layering and not sharding? Have you seen the SEETHING OUTRAGE against Sharding since the game was announced? Layering is their answer to us, as a collective, anti-Sharding stance.
Personally I think Sharding is better than Layering in terms of not propogating multiple instances of the same realm in areas where there’s not a lot of players. While no sharding/layering at all is ideal, it is what it is.
Plus it seems like Layering isn’t even meant so much as to be a direct answer to Sharding so much as it’s trying to prevent dead realms. This ALL factors in Blizzard’s thinking that Classic will start off with huge numbers and quickly lose most of those players because of “tourists”.
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the benefits gained by the people on a dead server suddenly joining a live server far outweigh the short term, 24 to 48 hours, time when the economy adjusts. this discussion is academic, blizzard doesn’t merge servers and specifically created the cross realm/sharding technology to avoid doing so.
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That is not reasonable, they are stating that they are using layering as opposed to sharding, which would require 500 worlds rather than 500 layers, for example, at launch. Stop trying to hit me and hit me.
Furthermore, how would you know if you were on a layer or a shard?
No, you’re right, responding with about what I would. Two servers merging would likely have similar economies anyway. If there was a difference the larger one would easily absorb the smaller, and demand would stay fairly consistent with supply
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Couldn’t agree more, passionate fans and reason might be our only hope for a good vanilla like experience.
Layering is basically Sharding but instead of applying only to a zone, it covers the entire game world. So if there’s a maximum number of players in a world but not enough to cause a layer to spawn, then the layer won’t spawn, even if ALL of those characters are within 1-2 zones.
It seems like Layering is a backpedal from Sharding, which introduces its own issues.
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Yeah, so you would all be in the same world, and not phase out randomly?
But the more important question is why would they make an entire 500 worlds at launch for 10k people in 1 zone when they could just make 500 zones?
The point is, in practice, in game, you won’t really know the difference if you are on a separate layer or shard, unless people are phasing in and out.
I agree I was just pointing out that it wouldn’t be all sunshine and roses.
It would definitely work it’s self out but a percentage of players would struggle to adjust to the new economy at first and for much longer than it takes the AH to sort out.
You two seemingly agree with each other so if I may ask, how long? How long do these supposed seperated static layers stay seperated?
You do realize the longer it is the more issues you are likely to face come merger?
Aside from different economies,have you thought of any other implications of suddenly throwing together multiple established,time permitting, servers would have?
Everyone keeps saying sharting and I just can’t read anymore. I totally lose the subject every time I see sharding/sharting…
I’m out.
What it will be, or, what what Blizzard said will be and what I hope will be, is there’s 3 worlds for 10k people. It’s only a ridiculous amount of worlds in Beta so they can poke at the technology and see how it works in real time. If there’s 500 worlds in launch, then there’s a problem, then the OP will be correct and Blizzard would have lied.
Ideally, you wouldn’t notice you were on a layer because since it’s world wide, you can go between zones and not phase out. I could see why that would happen in beta if they were tweaking the size/number of layers in real time.
It’s a good idea, but it will probably never happen because their cloud infrastructure can never hold 1k people in a single area. Not without dedicated servers for it. That’s why the promise that layering will be gone is completely contingent on server populations, and the fact is, it will never be “removed” only less noticeable on lower pop servers.
Doesn’t matter if it happens on the 10th day, the 10th week or the 10th month. The benefits of a merge are substantially better than any of the negatives. The servers are being merged for a reason afterall. The majority of people play the game to play the game which you can’t reasonably do on a dead server.
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You never see yourself phase out in game, you see others phase out with both sharding and layering, so your point is moot. The fact is, you can’t distinguish the difference between sharding and layering when both causes phasing.
I’ll leave this as a final note, I’m not asking for anyone to fully trust Blizzard. I’d really be a fool to ask that. I admit, I’m not 100% confident in what Blizzard will do if their predictions for Classic turn out to be false.
Blizzard hasn’t lied about Classic. Yet. I know I’ll be playing the upcoming stress test and leaving the appropriate feedback. If Classic really does suck and it becomes something I can’t support, I’ll vote with my wallet, unsubscribe, and play something else. If Blizzard is to be believed, there will be no Layering OR Sharding by Phase 2.
And hey, if Layering/Sharding is still around where there’s world bosses, with multiple world bosses per server, I think they’ll have trouble filling up those layers/shards at that point by burning their supporting customers.
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I would say until “tourists” are gone, though whenever I’m on vacation, I never want it to end.
I could see new guild rivalries emerging, #1 on old server vs #1 on new server. Can’t say this is unhealthy though. I could see pvp legends having a new variety of competition, also healthy imo.
Hard to speculate, just doesn’t make sense to me why temperary exploitable servers(exploitable because individual players can “merge” at will) would be better then “perma” ones that get merged by blizzard.
It won’t have been the first time they have lied, and there is no way they are putting 1k people in a starting zone. And there is no way they are creating an entire world when they can just create a zone and no one is the wiser.
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What? Why would two high pop static layers be slated for a merge? You were talking about if a low pop layer was absorbed into a high pop one and the resulting fuss that would occur as a result. As if people in a lifeboat would sneer at their rescuers.
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