Why does layering extend past the level 1-20 zones?

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
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layering exists to ease the starter zone rush and, more importantly, prevent most servers from being ghost towns after the tourists leave, keeping the populations of most servers healthy(faction balance aside) in the long run, should the game generally have a stable population afterwards and also not somehow crash and have only tens of thousands of players before phase 6 comes out

however, tourists aren’t going to reach level 20 very fast, and, by the time players reach that level, the population at the level 20+ ranges will be spread out evenly enough that the rush won’t be present at those levels, and tourists are likely to quit the game before they hit level 30, if not 20

theres a big benefit to having layering in the level 1-10 zones, and some benefit(and detriment) in the level 10-20 zones(but 15-25+ zones isn’t worth it; charred vale and its high-lvl nodes come to mind), but theres just too much detriment to justify having it in the level 20+ places, what with layer hopping respawning silver/gold/truesilver nodes, arena master, rare spawns(such as the guy that drops the pacifier; a BoE lvl 32 competitor to whirlwind axe), black lotus nodes, high-level chests, teremus the devourer, the guy that sells the frost oil formula, and the fishing nodes from just south of grom’gol to booty bay and along the northern shore of tanaris, which will have terrible effects upon the economy if they are left to be farmed at nearly triple speed by only a few players

and then theres the effects it has upon world PvP, which generally doesn’t happen in level 10-20 zones because, iirc, none of them are contested; I don’t need to explain how layer-hopping can affect world PvP

so, tell me; why does layering have to extend past the level 10-20 zones? is there something important that I’m missing here, or is it just a technical limitation?

why can’t the level 15-25 and higher level zones just take place on one single “layer”, regardless of the number of players present in those zones? just having it end at phase 1, even if it only lasts for 2 weeks, isn’t enough and could have damaging long-term effects on the economy
by zone, I mean(for example) zone as in stonetalon mountains, including all of its sub-zones, such as windshear crag and the charred vale

EDIT: there was something I hadn’t thought of; you could get into a different layer by going to an unlayered zone, and then go back to the layered zone to probably get into a different layer

this can be solved, perhaps, by causing the server(not the client) to remember which layer the character was last it WHEN said character was in a layered zone… and then, when phase 1 is over? the server can forget that numerical value

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Just remember how they said only starting zones temporarily, and without a warning it turned into all zones permanently.

This is why people don’t trust blizzard. Fans asked for one thing, “no changes”, and blizzard just struggles in listening department. Constantly trying to change causing people to flee right back to pservers.

Layers, crbg, etc…

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Yep this is the best solution if they are having layering in at all. It absolutely should not be used past these starting zones.

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Layering is not intended to be permanent, as far as I know.

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Permanently??
Dont post if you arent well informed on the subject

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No…it ends with phase 1. But phase 1 could go on for months.

I’m not too far behind Curt in thinking it could turn into something permanent past phase 1…maybe not the version we have in phase 1 but some variation of it.

By phase 2 way too many people will be invested in the game and will accept what is thrown at them.

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Cross realm existed in 1.12. I think they have done a great job keeping as much unchanged as possible.

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Because its Activision… And they want to spend as little money as possible to get this out, whether it ruins the game or not.

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Honestly I have nothing to say, your post just needs a bump and recognition of the agreement in hopes blizzard actually pays attention or recognizes the portion of the player base that isn’t falling in line with the changes they’re making after “understanding” that nobody is asking for this.

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So you want sharding?

Sharding is zone specific. Layering is essentially the same methodology but its azeroth specific.

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Becasue current gen designers have wedded wow to the shared servers model where your “server” is imaginary and world share with one another. It’s easier and lazy and covers gaps or low pop places but also easier to not have to deal with high populations in an area - just zone it! Thus, since they are divorced from a physical server (isolated) model they have to do something to keep their design structure in place. and sharding seems to be phasing on steroids with, maybe, limited areas or other world that you phase into.

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thats not fair… they did so well with destiny… err… oh… sorry.

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sharding would in this case still be different than layering because each shard is as big as multiple zones, instead of being much smaller
also, starter zone sharding would be better than the current implementation of layering where each layer is an entire continent

although, I did JUST realize that having layering be enabled in less than all zones would enable players to go to an unlayered zone then back to a layered zone to change their layer

this could be alleviated by having the server remember which layer a character was on when they were last in a layered zone, and then have them go back to that layer next time they go back to that layered zone

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So with that logic you might as well just keep the layering system.
And modify it to prevent exploitation.

The server just needs to remember which layer you were on for an hour after logging off. If you are gone for more than an hour you arent exploiting.

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i just did suggest keeping layering and modifying it to prevent exploitation
both in the OP and the post prior to the quoted one

though that thing about remembering your layer for an hour seems helpful, potentially; I’ll want to think more about that later

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Layering also allows for far fewer servers.

Blizzard has, for years, seemed to be operating under the principles of “It’s easier to gain forgiveness than permission” and “just a little at a time”.

They even used the same principles with sharding. First, it was “one of the principles of Classic is no sharding”. Then, when they stealth added sharding to the demo and got caught, it became sharding in the “starting areas” and for a “brief time at launch”. Now, they changed the name from sharding to layering, but extended that sharding (layering) to cover the entire continent and potentially extended the time for sharding (layering) to months.

I’m not saying that they will, but I would not be surprised if sharding (layering) was extended into phase 2 and beyond.

If it is extended, they could choose to extend it openly, something like:

“Sorry guys. We know we said it would be gone by phase 2, but the number of people still playing is far greater than we expected. Eliminating layering (sharding) would lead to excessive queues, and we feel that extending layering is the better option.”

OR

They could choose to stealth extend it (like they stealth added sharding to the demo) and only address it if they get caught, like:

“Sorry guys. We know you’ve been experiencing layering (sharding) well into phase 2, even though we told you it would be stopped. We thought we had it stopped, but there was a bug. We will fix the bug.” They can turn layering off for a bit, stealth re-enable it in a week or two. Of they get caught again, just claim “It’s a bug.”

In short, let the players become invested in their characters and more likely to continue playing, even with sharding (layering), then tell them that sharding (layering) is “working as intended” and will continue to be used “when necessary”.

As I said, I am not saying that Blizzard will do that, only that I would not be surprised if they did.

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It’s turned on in the beta in all zones so they can test it.

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They haven’t given us a blue on forum that says:

Phase 1 only and not again
Starting zones only

Which means they can extend indefinitely.

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They said it wouldn’t exist past Phase 1 in about 10 different interviews on the release date reveal day.

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And it will be turned on in all zones on launch. They already said that.

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