A 10k realm population on a private server was already the tip of the iceberg that was with zero layering.
I can’t fathom how realms past this amount will be able to have layering turned off let alone be “playable”.
Is no one really thinking about this? Sure people will drop off, But Herod supposedly has between 50-100k players easily.
The world is big, but not that BIG.
It would be interesting to know the numbers.
But it is all fairly opaque.
Looking at retail, many of the FULL servers have over 500k characters, while other full servers have fewer than 200k characters. How that relates to accounts could mean 200k-500k characters (1 character = 1 account) or as few as 20k-50k accounts (10 character = 1 account).
More confusing is some of the High and Medium servers have more characters than some of the Full servers.
Even more confusing some of the retail servers that are listed as ‘New Players’ (promoting character creation) have more characters than some of the FULL servers.
On top of that how does character count relate to accounts that are active and play and log in. And how does layering blur a Retail comparison. What does Low Medium Full actually mean in Classic in terms of logged in player caps, layer pop cap, layer count cap, etc…
Would be interesting to know. But I don’t think it is going to happen. I think when it comes time to remove layering many of the servers will have undergone the pop drop off they are predicting.
However I would not be surprised if at least one server retains a population too high to realistically turn off layering. In that case I imagine additional servers are added and they promote character xfer.
Id assume max online would be 2.5 to 3k after layering is gone.
Yea I don’t understand, does Bizzard think that by phase 2 the realm pop will be 3k or so? If it’s more than that does layering stay until the population stabilizes at realm capacity?
@ Xury Great question, even if Herod stays half as populated after sharding they will need to split it into like 30 seperate servers if max pop is 3k
If anyone actually thinks that layering is going to go away… You’re nuts… Even though they said it would @ phase 2, it wont… I mean the fact that they said they wanted to keep classic as close to vanilla and authentic as possible and layering exists to begin with should tell ya something …
Not sure how you arrive at those numbers. We don’t know how many players are on Herod. I mean a 3k login cap can support about 25k active daily accounts without queues (assuming average playtime around 3h/day). If you needed 30 servers @ 3k login cap, then you are assuming 750k accounts on Herod. Lets say 500k considering prime time focus. Seems high but possible, but more importantly we don’t know.
Their should be a dev interview with these type of questions.
I want to know what realm caps are currently and what they will be after phase 2 with layering being removed.
I also want to know what happens if during phase 2 the population is beyond realm capacity, do they split the realm into separate servers with their own cap which would also divide the community breaking rivalries and relationships or does layering remain until the population stabilizes around realm cap?
They paint this picture of being like they can remove layering whenever they want but there are holes in their plan that don’t add up which makes me think they’re full of it.
First evidence of being full of it by stating that they wanted to create an “authentic experience” for us and then incorporating layering/sharding into Classic 
Even after drop off 50k players don’t suddenly turn to 3k. Only thing that would explain that kind of decline would be if they kept layering. Sharding is what I hate the absolute most about retail. If it stayed in classic, I would have to quit. And I hate to say that because I’m so amped to play. But idk… I liked the community more than anything and layering would ruin that if it turned permanent
Yeah that’s what I don’t get, I’m sure Herod will be a super high population after the fact. People aren’t gonna want to reroll to another realm, I’m thinking they will have to offer transfers?
Honestly I don’t see layering going away, people will not want to transfer. I wish blizzard was more transparent with realm size etc.
I would suggest you avoid Herod, Faerlina and any EST server then. If Blizzard really does enforce a cap then queues are going to be insanely long on servers. If they dont enforce a cap, then you turn classic wow into BFA with 1 server actually being 10 servers.
That’s like…the whole point of this forum; making up numbers so you can cry doom and the end of the world.
Yeah I’m not too worried with the realms I rolled on. (Atiesh, whitemane, grobbulus).
My main concern is for these highly congested realms, I don’t believe we will see such a high drop off if the caps are set to 50k for example. Let’s just say half of that was to actually drop off, that leaves 25k which is still an insane amount for one realm.
If I had a choice I would. Unfortunately our guild is going there.
He actually believes blizzard is going to turn layering off. Hue hue hue.
I’m so glad someone who knows what’s going to happen finally showed up. How big does classic’s total pop have to be to force bliz to deviate from their script.
No one knows. But a 25K population is probably a good amount for an active vibrant server. What’s the average playtime per person per week? 10 to 15 hours maybe? So on average said server would have 4k people logged in and playing. The problem becomes peak hours of play, then you have queues - - - or layers.
Not happening…
25k is about the same as a larger vanilla wow server…
Servers for classic will be much bigger than that. I think Herod at the moment is at least double
10k was already too much on a private server, the world is big but not that huge.
When you have a realm of over 10k you run into issues with materials such as herbs and mining nodes etc and many other things.
25k is way too much for one realm with zero layering I will tell you this right now.