WoW Classic Era - PvP Realm Layer Behavior Change

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
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Hey folks,

I wanted to drop by and let you know about a new, slightly experimental, feature that is coming with patch 1.15.5, and the Anniversary realms launching on Thursday.

As many of you will know, with Season of Discovery we implemented a system for PvP ruleset realms that restrictions faction creation when one faction becomes dominant. This system worked fantastically for keeping one faction from snowballing and has maintained a healthy balance throughout Season of Discovery. We’ve already announced that this feature will be enabled for the Anniversary PvP realm.

But, one of the consistent pieces of feedback was that a faction balanced realm does not lead to a faction balanced world due to how the layering system handles player load.

With 1.15.5, PvP realms will attempt to balance faction at both the layer and the specific zone level. What this means is that if one faction exceeds our balance threshold, any additional players attempting to enter that same zone will instead transfer to another layer.

The system will work much like our Warmode system in The War Within, where we balance as many copies of the zone as possible and eventually any overflow of one dominant faction will end up on a one sided zone by themselves.

As part of this change, we are also going to heavily restrict players ability to “layer hop” on PvP realms, you will face a much longer cooldown before the system will allow you to change layer again that will also ramp up with each successive layer change. The idea behind this is try to maintain these layers faction balance and discourage a mass influx of multiple raids of one faction trying to flood a specific area.

Whenever we make a change to these sort of systems there are a ton of unknowns around quite how it will behave once real humans get involved. We will be closely monitoring how this all feels in-game and will make changes or outright disable the system if it ultimately leads to a negative play experience.

We’re excited to see how this plays out and the carnage it may lead to. One final warning however, please be very confident that you want to engage in Player vs Player combat in Classic Era (including the Anniversary realms) as this time around, there will be no escaping the other faction by switching to a layer that is dominated by your faction. If you sign up for PvP this time, you’re signing up for everything that entails.

Whether you roll Alliance or Horde, good luck, we’ll see you on the battlefield.

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First

10char

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Add RPPVP realm, please!

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Add an rpvp realm then please so i don’t have to worry about getting layered every hour when i don’t want to or asked, then can’t change back due to the cooldown

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Make the new WBuff items have a CD (Debuff even if needed) and make them reuseuable.

Only Gold Buyers benefit from expensive consumed on use WBuffs anywhere

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Why fix something that didn’t need fixing?

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its like you didn’t read the post… layers would make the general balancing moot, because the layers would be imbalanced themselves… its like saying 50g respec isnt a problem, just pay it every day… no, that’s why we’re getting DS.

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but it did need fixing? being able to layer hop to avoid world pvp on a pvp realm is stupid

having faction balanced servers but then not balancing the layers makes the entire exercise pretty pointless, too.

I’m sceptical to how this will actually work, I don’t know about you guys but

doesn’t fill me with a great deal of confidence, there’s many times where I’ve gone out with warmode on, see a crate drop from the sky and rush to get it, only to be outnumbered 4:1 or something absurd. Hopefully they get it better for the people who genuinely want a more reasonable world pvp experience.

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Please give us an unlayered rppvp realm.

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Irrelevant as long as boons are in the game.

Boons have always been and are only an avenue of aversion to wpvp.

It has nothing to do with raid logging and everything to do with avoiding dying

Who cares if guilds dodge? Just remove layers and bring the queue back

This is gonna cause more problems than it “fixes”

Have they brought up how this is going to work with world bosses??

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Zone balance sounds terrible. The whole point of layers was to avoid phasing in and out and seeing different people.

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My big concern is going to be getting on the same layer as your friends. I’d hate to be layered out of my party as we cross into a zone and then be stuck with a cooldown to prevent me from hopping back.

I know it’s not supposed to be an issue, but we’ll see.

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Layer balance is cool and all but you know you need like 200+ to contest world bosses, can you allow layer hopping specifically when a world boss spawns on a certain layer?

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everybody hates layering. please rethink this. also please remove dual spec, we need more gold sinks for this game.

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“Due to feedback” nobody gave you any feedback on this. They made it up entirely.

This will cause massive issues contesting world bosses.

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Nobody gave you any feedback, please remove all layers

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It’s gonna be such a complete sh*t show

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How are you suppose to play with people who are in the same group? Hope and pray that half your party/raid won’t be on a different layer?

Please consider having areas that have no layers with resources/popular for wpvp. Hillsbrad being a perfect spot for this. Layers destroy communities/organic interactions/wpvp. Being able to plan pvp events is difficult with layers, and with this new system, it truly makes it impossible.

Or, if possible, make it so people can be put on a unrestricted layer regardless of “balance”.

There must be a compromise that can be had here.

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Aren’t world bosses instanced now?