You guys seem to misunderstand.
I understand something is going to be needed in the first little bit to deal with the masses.
I just do not think effectively sharding the ENTIRE WORLD is the solution.
It is rife with the potential for abuse and exploitation.
I would be fine with them sharding 1 to 10. Maybe up to 20 if need be, but blizzard themselves admitted 90% of characters made in vanilla never made it past level 10.
Food for thought.
You going to play Classic still @Instinctz, or is layering a deal breaker? That would be a shame having had to wait 14 years for Classic! 
I figure it will be in game for max 2 months. I expect the bulk of the lifespan of classic WoW to be 2.5 years. 2.5 years is 30 months. That means that only 6.66% of your playtime is potentially impacted by layering. I think you should try to wait it out and see if you can make it through Phase 1, you wouldn't want to miss out on Classic launch and then playing through it with everyone because of something we only know minor details about!
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Lvl 35Just saw this one posted to Classic WoW subreddit.
https://www.reddit.com/r/classicwow/com ... _layering/I think people are overreacting over the fact that layering will be implemented. Servers with long-term healthy populations are needed, and on launch the swarm of people demands a certain type of isolation. This solves both imo.
The communication from Blizzard was not clear and precise enough, I agree but this system sounds much better than sharding.
You will never be able to meet a player from another server (realm) and never see them again.
Guildmates are preferred to be put on the same layer. Friends that you play with are likely to be in the same guild as you.
If you group up with someone outside your layer, you will be transferred to that layer permanently until you group up with another player who is outside your layer.
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The problem with that image is that it confuses sharding with cross-realm, which are two entirely separate things. Sharding separates players when there's too many in a zone. Cross-realm puts players together when there isn't enough. They serve the exact opposite purpose. Cross-realm appears like sharding, which is why people often confuse the two.
That's why Nicholaes on reddit created a more accurate image in response.
It still makes some assumptions, but the general gist of it is there.
https://www.reddit.com/r/classicwow/com ... ing_fixed/
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Except thats wrong. With sharding you could have much more then the 3k cap. Shard the 1 to 20 zones to deal with the tourists and it would do just what layering wants to do.
WITHOUT AFFECTING WORLD PVP.
WITHOUT AFFECTING RARE RESOURCES.
Sharding would give you the same benefits as layering.
WITHOUT affecting high level zones.
I agree. Before we got the news about layering, that's what I thought Blizzard would use sharding for: to have higher than normal population caps as a temporary measure. But they opted for layering instead.
We may appeal to our feelings and opinions all we want, but Blizzard does have the statistics, and statistics don't care about how we feel, or what we think - it only shows the truth. If I remember correctly, the statistics were that 70% of players don't make it past level 10. Whether we have sharding or layering, it might not make much of a difference; the population will be high at the start, but drop significantly by the end of the starting zones. There might be only one or two layers per server by the end of the first month.
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Disgusting. This is worse than sharding. No one should be happy about this. Part of the fun of playing at release is seeing tons and tons of people everywhere having fun.
Can you elaborate more on how is layering worse than sharding? I was under impression that it is actually better solution.
Also I am a guy who really doesnt see anything good on overcrowded starting zones where you are unable to complete pretty much anything.
Because the plan was to shard low level zones only which would not impact world PvP or the rarity of stuff like black lotus and thorium.
Instead, we are going to shard every zone instead.
Instinctz, maybe just hold off until phase 2 to start playing? It seems like you won't enjoy it even one tiny bit, and everyone will be exploiting constantly, so probably better you wait.
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It will be used for the entirety of phase 1 and affects the entire server instead of just starting zones. Sharding was supposed to only be starting zones for a little white after release.
The layers will have the same amount of players as the original server population cap. That's as close to authentic to the original release as you can reasonably get. Having more people than that in the zones at the same time is inauthentic. If they wanted to do exactly as they did in the vanilla days, we'd have the original cap while everyone else sits in queues. So either way - sharding, layering, or queues - you're not playing with everybody on the server anyway.
Layering is just a way to turn server queues into actually playing WoW instead - an ideal scenario for most people. The potential downsides are minimal in comparison, not to mention temporary. No one should idealize not being able to play because of queues, and asking for everyone to jump in with no population mitigation factor at all is asking for an inauthentic, non-vanilla launch.
True enough. I don't recall exactly where I heard/read this, but layering may not be used for the entirety of phase 1; they merely stated that the end of phase 1 is the deadline. It's definitely possible they will stop using it even earlier than that. Heck, if server populations drop faster than expected, a single layer is no different than a single server anyway. People are making their concerns about layering known. If widespread abuse becomes commonplace, Blizzard will likely make adjustments or take action, just as they did for the community's response to loot trading.
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I think the sharding debate surely was needed, but to me the layering solution seems the best way they could have gone about it. I surely would much rather have layering with a select amount of servers instead of a gazillion servers at launch without layering and ending up with empty ones staying open after the initial wave has gone. We will have to see, but I don't see them changing course from their current point of view because this is the best way they can meet expectations while still have fine control over to many players being at the same area and maintaining playability.
Layers are a perfect solution, and I'm so thrilled Blizzard came up with it. I don't think I can make it more clear than this:
You will not feel that you're on a layer unless you're actively trying to abuse the system.
Since the sum of the layer populations is equal to the server population, Blizzard can simply start peeling away layers when they feel like players have spread out enough. The only thing you will ever notice is that more and more people seem to be joining your server over time until at some point the people you see stay the same. Someone earlier made a comment about layers only existing for 6,5% for Classic's total estimated lifespan, and the estimate was pretty grounded, too.
I would much rather be able to login and play the game, than crash and queue for 3 hours until finally giving up. It's not like you'll be missing out on people-galore-mega-fests just because you don't see them in Northshire or the Valley of Trials in the first second of your classic career. People will still group up in massive meat trains to go raid some poor village, and there will still be serverwide gnome marathons to Orgrimmar.
Sharding is a very different story - let's not go down that path.
Okay so the end of phase one is the deadline.Minorou wrote: ↑6 years agoThe layers will have the same amount of players as the original server population cap. That's as close to authentic to the original release as you can reasonably get. Having more people than that in the zones at the same time is inauthentic. If they wanted to do exactly as they did in the vanilla days, we'd have the original cap while everyone else sits in queues. So either way - sharding, layering, or queues - you're not playing with everybody on the server anyway.
Layering is just a way to turn server queues into actually playing WoW instead - an ideal scenario for most people. The potential downsides are minimal in comparison, not to mention temporary. No one should idealize not being able to play because of queues, and asking for everyone to jump in with no population mitigation factor at all is asking for an inauthentic, non-vanilla launch.
True enough. I don't recall exactly where I heard/read this, but layering may not be used for the entirety of phase 1; they merely stated that the end of phase 1 is the deadline. It's definitely possible they will stop using it even earlier than that. Heck, if server populations drop faster than expected, a single layer is no different than a single server anyway. People are making their concerns about layering known. If widespread abuse becomes commonplace, Blizzard will likely make adjustments or take action, just as they did for the community's response to loot trading.
Said by the same person who told us sharding would only be used in low level zones.
Catch my drift?
Still able to be abused and exploited.
Still sharding more then was initially promised.
Likes: 35
I'm surprised to see people defending layering on this forum. They really should have just made multiple realms instead of all this convuluted garbage. Layering does almost everything multiple realms can do but worse.Minorou wrote: ↑6 years agoThe layers will have the same amount of players as the original server population cap. That's as close to authentic to the original release as you can reasonably get. Having more people than that in the zones at the same time is inauthentic. If they wanted to do exactly as they did in the vanilla days, we'd have the original cap while everyone else sits in queues. So either way - sharding, layering, or queues - you're not playing with everybody on the server anyway.
Layering is just a way to turn server queues into actually playing WoW instead - an ideal scenario for most people. The potential downsides are minimal in comparison, not to mention temporary. No one should idealize not being able to play because of queues, and asking for everyone to jump in with no population mitigation factor at all is asking for an inauthentic, non-vanilla launch.
True enough. I don't recall exactly where I heard/read this, but layering may not be used for the entirety of phase 1; they merely stated that the end of phase 1 is the deadline. It's definitely possible they will stop using it even earlier than that. Heck, if server populations drop faster than expected, a single layer is no different than a single server anyway. People are making their concerns about layering known. If widespread abuse becomes commonplace, Blizzard will likely make adjustments or take action, just as they did for the community's response to loot trading.
Likes: 35
What about in the case where you want to play with a friend and they aren't on your layer?Bumlebi wrote: ↑6 years agoLayers are a perfect solution, and I'm so thrilled Blizzard came up with it. I don't think I can make it more clear than this:
You will not feel that you're on a layer unless you're actively trying to abuse the system.
Since the sum of the layer populations is equal to the server population, Blizzard can simply start peeling away layers when they feel like players have spread out enough. The only thing you will ever notice is that more and more people seem to be joining your server over time until at some point the people you see stay the same. Someone earlier made a comment about layers only existing for 6,5% for Classic's total estimated lifespan, and the estimate was pretty grounded, too.
I would much rather be able to login and play the game, than crash and queue for 3 hours until finally giving up. It's not like you'll be missing out on people-galore-mega-fests just because you don't see them in Northshire or the Valley of Trials in the first second of your classic career. People will still group up in massive meat trains to go raid some poor village, and there will still be serverwide gnome marathons to Orgrimmar.
Sharding is a very different story - let's not go down that path.
I suspect Blizzard will have thought about this as it's a pretty clear scenario where layering might be challenged. Solution? Put new players in the same layer as their friends are already on.
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That isn't a solution at all. If you find out a friend or coworker plays WoW you probably are already both going to have characters made already so this "solution" is pretty worthless.
Valid point, I did not think of that.Swans wrote: ↑6 years agoThat isn't a solution at all. If you find out a friend or coworker plays WoW you probably are already both going to have characters made already so this "solution" is pretty worthless.
Then you group with them, and one of you move to the other guy's layer for that play session. I suspect Blizzard will have you assigned to a certain layer, so that for the coming sessions you will return to that layer.
Either way, I don't think layering will stay in for long, so it's pretty possible that by the time you realize your coworker plays as well then layering is already a thing of the past.
I totally agree it isn't optimal in all ways, but if the alternative is a laggy and shitty gameplay experience at launch, I would rather take a slightly immersion breaking experience (which albeit only breaks immersion in certain edge cases). I stand by the fact that layering is a decent solution for the challenge presented, and to the people who're whining about it; wait until Phase 2.
EDIT:
I didn't notice this until just now.
Blizzard is implementing layering because they expect a huge intial player influx because they have all the "tourists" from retail who will have access from the get-go and might want to check it out, and because they know that the market and player base for classic already exists.
This is an issue because none of the zones are designed to handle such a meat fest of players. Solution: they partition the realm for a brief period after launch, and as players start to spread out both geographically and in terms of level they merge the partitions. I understand it's not 100% ideal, but I don't understand how this is bad.
Multiple realms will lead to low population servers, which are fun for no one. Say you create a character and realize that Northshire is crowded AF, you'll go make a character on another realm to play instead as you don't want to spend 5 hours in Northshire. Lots of people will do this, and eventually you end up with realm populations that are roughly dictated by the throughput capabilities of the starting zones.
This is true if the influx of new players rapidly declines over the first few days of Classic. If instead the influx ncreases slowly over time (as it did in the beginning of Vanilla WoW), more realms would be ideal.
Thing with multiple realms opening is that after initial surge of players you will get inevitable ebb. There might be quite a huge percent loss of players. But you have so many realms on your hands to satisfy all the players which came to launch. Now what to do with that seriously underpopulated realms?
IMO layering is good in that you will have no "ghost realms" or just bare minimum of them.
All you have to do is party up with him. By that you two will be on the same layer. Same if you join a guild from different layer - you will hop on their layer. As the layers will have around the same player's numbers as the vanilla realms. There is not that big of a deal about them. And on top of that after phase one at the latest you will have realm with healthy population.
For me its much better solution than sharding which is completely immersion breaking.
Is this actually the way it is? Will Blizzard intentionally be overpopulating the servers in hopes that people lose interest? Seems weird to me, but it might be the case - would love to see a source if you have one! IIRC realm populations are 3k-5k, so having layers be somewhere around 500-1k in the beginning and increasing steadily over time sounds reasonable to me.
Do you really think that is a solution? Because if you do, you obviously don't know what happens if you have a lot of medium/low pop servers after 6-12months. Then you have to do merges, you DO NOT want server merges. That's like a inbred cousin of layering/sharding.
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