layering itself doesn’t do anything to server cap no. but when they remove layering they have implied that they will be lowering server cap. the servers just can’t handle that large a population. my guess is they’ll knock it down by around half if not closer to vanilla’s 2500-3000 pop. which will result in queues. just read this post.
and just to note, they did raise server caps, twice if i recall.
I just wanted to say that layering itself wont prevent a queue. If they remove it (as they promised) then I expect that they still introduce a queue due to the sheer number of players on any given zone for a world that was not designed around 15k players+.
That said I really wonder what their strategy was. If we take the wowhead census data at face value and given the amount of servers available its not too far fetched, it would mean that peak servers like skeram or faerelina have around 60-70k players on the server. Now while not all are active all at the same time it certainly beats the original server size of 3k. Even if you raise the cap to 5-7k as a lot of private servers had its still a large drop in playerbase to even get there remotely.
So whats the plan here? Was blizzard really hoping/counting on a server where 70k players play, that around 90-95% get bored and leave classic? And that goes for every single server they opened? What is the strategy for phase 2? Will we have hourly queues again because its just one server now and the hardware can not handle all players at once?
If they had just opened enough realms all based on a 3k server cap to begin with and then merged dead servers this issue could have been avoided.
I am already dreading this blue post that might announce that in the end they might not get rid of layering at all because its not technically possible. They have promised things in the past so I wouldnt put it past them, in which case classic would be dead anyway.
The layering is still necessary on some servers.
I recall seeing 8 people farming 12 mobs during prime time. And I know that it would have been even worse if not for layering.
Without layering, instances would almost have been the only way to level on some servers.
I really wish layering didn’t exist. It’d be nice to actually go to city and town raids and have a working world defense channel again. That’s the biggest thing I hate about classic right now is the restrictions layering brings.
i don’t think the current server caps are beyond 10k but i don’t have any data on that. someone that looked at full servers on census when it was up might know.
60-70k with people logging out and others logging in every 1-5 seconds won’t be near to that many online at once. and it seems like that would be enough people to add up to about a 10k cap with a queue at peak.
community also whined a lot to increase server cap. i assume the original cap was likely around 7k. blizzard also opened up additional servers for people to transfer, which people asked for. these full servers that’ll end up with another 5-10k additional people in queue when phase 2 happens made their own bed. even the med pop servers will likely have a short 5min queue with their current pops.
they aren’t going to open up more servers for transfer if people aren’t spreading out though. they may open new ones up with phase 2 so we get fresh servers that were never layered.
but removing layering is quite possible. people that didn’t transfer off full servers are just going to be stuck in a long queue when it happens because they can’t remove layering and not reduce pop cap. it will just result in a rather unhealthy server.
anyways, people chose to stay on full servers. blizzard did warn people and did quite a lot to get people moving off full/high pop servers. the player base has nobody but themselves to blame at this point.
Are you playing a different game than I am? Everywhere I go every quest mob is camped to oblivion. I have had to dungeon spam the last few levels because I could not quest (47-49).
I can only imagine how camped the lower level areas still are.
That was exactly what Blizzard was counting on. And since it hasn’t, yet, there’s a bit of a mess, because they also knew layering wouldn’t work for phase 2.
On another note, they also said the hardware could handle large numbers of people, but the experience would be miserable in terms of questing.
[Why isn’t layering gone?]
How do you know it isn’t gone already, on your realm?
Every realm is different. Each realm will change the number of layers based on current population.
As far as I know, layering is dynamic. When your population is low (off-peak) there may be only 1 layer. That is the same as “layering is gone”. Then when the population of THAT realm gets past 30,000 players or so, a layer is added.
Blizzard is never going to “turn off layering, and let you have 90,000 players in the same layer in the same realm”. That does not match the Vanilla experience, where realms could not handle more than 30,000 players: the other 60,000 would be in a queue.