To me, servers were (and are) an expression of technical limitations. Ideally we would all live on the same server. Some reasons continue to make sense (e.g. geo based servers) but I’m confused why so many people seem really keen on having individual servers.
Wouldn’t we all be better off on the same server?
…Nnnno because those technical limitations still exist. You will never get the same performance out of one server with millions of players on it that you would splitting them across several. It’s just not feasible.
Also you would need to get aggressive with sharding to keep world content from being overwhelmed.
Lastly, RPers having their own server is a non-insignificant quality of life feature.
Yes they are tech limitations and those limitations still stand today
It is not possible to have all players on one server even the mega servers still see ques here and there due to those tech limitations.
People want more than one server so we don’t have to face the results of those limitations.
Servers are massively bigger than they where in og tbc to the new modern tech limits but those limits have not gotten to the point of everyone on a single server yet.
I can only speak for myself. But i can tell you in Classic? Grob was 100% Different then the other PVP servers. Just different folks. Y’know? Different community’s go to different server tags ETC RP-PVP is one of a kind in that sense.
If there were 100,000 people in Orgrimmar that would be kind of ridiculous. Also if it made 1/50th of the people invisible that would also be silly. I think the idea of liking dedicated servers stems from the concept of things like IRC channels. You are apart of a particular instance of a thing that has regular visitors that you encounter over and over giving a sense of familiarity. That way you can eventually grow together and form communities. If you can’t rely on some subset of the same people being present at any given time then you are just starting over forever and nobody gets to know one another.
At least, this is how humans interacted with the internet prior to modern social media.
There would be no low-pop places.
I can imagine 10,000 people trying to kill the same rare mob for a quest. 
Server location is kind of a big thing IMO. People in different time zones play together, so the major activity on a server is going on during high traffic periods of the day/evening.
Now this would be moot on a world server. But would you always want things busy all the time, world never slowing down? Hmm.
Of course, and I’m not saying to jump the gun right now. it’s just that a lot of people seem to hold some sort of stock in server “identity”
There’s no difference between servers, and assigned layers. There’s a lot more cool things that could be done with layers, but if Blizzard even thinks about it, this community would collectively lose their mind and short out the last 5 brain cells it shares.
It depends. As some servers do have different world boss timers, as well as Different regions. I mean are Aussies or Latin American’s going on different servers. I’m no Tech guy but could you explain to me how that would work? I know Aussies current hate U.S servers due to pings. There’s also the language barrier.
The only thing I can see that would make sense is if the “layers” were just divided by the current realms, but the only way to see people of a different layer would be to intentionally form a group from your friends list. There should be no way to /who someone not on your realm / layer.
I haven’t played in awhile, but I think FFXIV behaves that way. Assuming they are actually in the same server cluster.
Ah yes. You got me on the region thing. So there would have to be separate region servers But after that, layers could handle a lot of the business. Although the dev team has already said there are some behind the scenes things that also break so maybe that’s not entirely true either.
I just feel like layers wouldn’t be such a terrible thing if they were named + restricted. Like I can’t just happily travel between layers on a whim, and in the rare case I manage to transcend layers, it won’t be long before the server pulls me back to my home layer.
mega server tech exists, like in gw2, but i guess blizz hasn’t figured out how to copy that yet. not that they would be interested in doing it though b/c it would cut into those juicy paid server transfer profits.
I really liked the way servers were in Classic. Each server had its communities, rivalries, and stories. Which to me made the game feel like a real MMO and not a single-player game with a group lobby.
I quit Retail over the game becoming more and more like a single-player game with only guilds being the real communities (you could say the communities are on Discord etc but you can find the same types of communities for almost any game/genre). I do not like 25k servers and they do not allow me to have the fun I do on the smaller servers. Probably because I consider community stuff to be vastly more interesting than only thinking about my own character.
Being in a guild I like and helping to lead it lets me still have fun and that is why I am still playing now, but really I prefer when servers have real communities far more. With a horde and alliance side as well for the PVP servers anyway.
I think that the problem with layering is it goes against the open world view. I’m against it in Classic vanilla. But I can see it more understood in BC > Wotlk. As in Vanilla World PvP was honestly much more built in and useful then just “Heuhuehue gank xd”
And jumping on a whim is again another huge problem with it. I think they could fix it. But Layering sorta falls into one of those categories of Blizzard that is. Good idea! Bad implement. Abandoned / Not fix tweak etc. I’m no Layer lover. But i do understand it’s merit, but also its flaw’s. The problem is for me is i’m too cynical, or as i call it Realist when it comes to this kinda stuff. The amount of times i’m about to mortal strike charge some one in classic / Vanilla and they layer hop is bad You have no idea how good it feels to track someone as a Night elf Warrior uheuheh.
That’s been my criticism of layers from the beginning. They’re not rigid. It’s too easy to just jump to another one and you can stay on that new layer for days.
Layers should stop being invisible. You choose your layer when you create your character, and that’s your home layer. When that layer dies, it gets folded into another one. Your name is unique across all the layers and Blizzard routinely clears names from unused characters.
I think if Blizzard honestly cared enough this would be fine. It reminds me of RPGS that were online. PSO / PSU come to mind in a sense with Lobby’s. More so PSO. It would be cool to see how much they’re paying to keep up a server no one play’s on compared to just for example. Doing the layer idea you suggest.
And not knowing your layer was a nightmare too. I’m so happy someone made an addon to fix that later down the line. I just don’t think World of Warcraft was built around the idea. I mean if there’s two bobs and i do /who. Will both there names show up? Or will it be there name then there layer.
Would LFG / World chat / Global / World Be layered i know in Current Classic LFG isn’t.
In 2022 it’s a stylistic choice and not a response to a tech limitation. In 2005 it was a necessity. They could update their infrastructure to put all players in the same region on the same realm, but that is an expensive task and there are advantages to the current system. Particularly familiarity and world immersion (you see the same people, and they don’t vanish in the open world because they went to another layer).
Runescape has the best server option. The authentication server and player servers are separate from the game server. So you just switch servers as you need. High competition in this area for a mob you want to kill, just hop servers. There’s like 200+ active servers at a time.