WoW Classic - Blizzard Responds to Layering Issues
Originally Posted by blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
We’ve been monitoring players’ use of layers, and we agree that we should add a delay between subsequent layer transfers. Under the hood we have all the controls I talked about in the Reddit AMA before launch, a few secret weapons we haven’t discussed publicly, and we’re working on deploying some additional controls to further restrain layering from being exploitable.

However, we also want to assure you that the issue is a much smaller problem than some people are claiming. We’ve been closely monitoring the effect layering is having on economies and other aspects of the game, and many of the stories we see posted are wildly inaccurate. We’ve seen screenshots of banks full of rare crafting materials, which we’ve investigated and proved false.

Another popular theory is that you can determine your current layer by doing a /who in a capital city, and comparing the results against the /who your friend does. That doesn’t work because /who returns results from the entire realm, not just from your layer, and if the result set is too large it truncates the results before sorting them. This means every player gets different results, but those differences in result set have nothing to do with which layer you’re on. This has led some people to claim that they’ve discovered dozens of layers per realm, but that claim is completely false.

All realms have a single-digit number of layers. Most of them have a low single-digit number.

Rest assured that there are not people running around with banks full of (Thorium) Arcane Crystals or Black Lotus.
This article was originally published in forum thread: WoW Classic - Blizzard Responds to Layering Issues started by Stoy View original post
Comments 69 Comments
  1. Redroniksre's Avatar
    Some people here honestly think the majority are abusing layering? That is pretty funny. They have zero proof of course, just looking for clicks and bait comments i suppose.
  1. phattsao's Avatar
    Honestly, I kinda believe them that it's blown out of proportion. But at the same time I can't help but notice they didn't mention exploiting layering to AOE farm mobs at all....And yeah, I do suspect that those guilds that already killed Rag probably are abusing this for crafting mats and stuff. The screenshot of all the level 1 rogues with the same name wasn't doctored. Hopefully they at least give 'em a warning to scare them straight.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by Daish View Post
    this blue poster is ignorant or flat out lying about how the /who command works it can be used to see how many people exist in your layer and can be used to estimate how many layers exist

    on my server ive estimated about 10 different layers 50 is the max result for the /who command but you can include levels or class types to narrow the search and find the total population of each zone and compare it to how many exist within your own layer

    The thing is the guy in this screenshot is IN teldrassil, which kind of messes up the experiment. /who shows you players on your current layer IN THE SAME ZONE, and that's how it's always worked. By /who 1-60 you forced it to show all layers.

    The blue post was saying two different people OUTSIDE of teldrassil would get different results by doing /who teldrassil, regardless of layer. And yeah, it sounds confusing as I type it, but it does jive with the what the blue post said.
  1. Azerox's Avatar
    I would say this if I was Blizzard.
    Economy is already broken beyond repair.
  1. Relapses's Avatar
    Ah yes, what would the comments section of a Blue post be if there weren't a healthy number of players disagreeing with Blizzard's assessment for no reason other than completely unwarranted cynicism?
  1. Kuja's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by EternalBany View Post
    fix hunters
    What's there that needs fixing?
  1. Justpassing's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Kuja View Post
    What's there that needs fixing?
    More weapons!
  1. bullseyed's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Lycanthat View Post
    All I wanna know is: if a server currently has for example 3 layers, is Blizzard essentially relying on a 2/3rds drop-off of concurrent players in order to keep the queues the same?
    Queues and layers have nothing to do with each other. A server with 3 layers will never have a queue.

    Layers exist to prevent 20,000 people from stacking on the same quest mob at the same time to DC people or prevent them from clicking on it.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Layering was added to prevent the starting zones from being overrun when everyone logged on at the same time to do the starting quests. It makes sense that by the time you get to 60 and if there are only 4-5 other 60s on your server, you could all be in different layers and essentially have a whole zone to farm by yourself. This could result in those people farming lots of stuff relatively quickly.

    They could then log out and back in and have a 4/5 shot at getting put into a different layer and doing it all over again.

    The problem resolves automatically eventually as more people level up and/or quit.
  1. Deletedaccount1's Avatar
    Layering makes my server feel kind of dead sometimes.
  1. Akka's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Daish View Post
    this blue poster is ignorant or flat out lying about how the /who command works it can be used to see how many people exist in your layer and can be used to estimate how many layers exist
    I think he simply pointed that a regular /who will list everyone on the server. He didn't rule out that a more specific command can work.
  1. Akka's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Daish View Post
    the regular /who command will only ever show people in your own layer
    No.
    If I do a "/who teldrassil 1-6", I have above 50 results.
    If I do a "/who z-"teldrassil" 1-6", I have 35 results.

    By default, the /who is realm-wide. The /who z-"" is layer-by-layer.
  1. Tolfor's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Akka View Post
    No.
    If I do a "/who teldrassil 1-6", I have above 50 results.
    If I do a "/who z-"teldrassil" 1-6", I have 35 results.

    By default, the /who is realm-wide. The /who z-"" is layer-by-layer.
    It's easier for Daish to pretend that he knows more than every other player and that Blizzard is blatantly lying than it is for him to notice that his "proof" of Blizzard's lies uses two DIFFERENT command strings for the comparison.
  1. tangers58's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by otaXephon View Post
    Ah yes, what would the comments section of a Blue post be if there weren't a healthy number of players disagreeing with Blizzard's assessment for no reason other than completely unwarranted cynicism?
    ... have you played any blizzard game in the last 10 years? Cynicism is completely warranted. How many times do they have to straight up lie before you stop lapping up the piss?
  1. cparle87's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Syce View Post
    its nice they made a post about this. They need to do it more often so people can start to understand that Blizzard CAN see everything going on in the game that the players cannot.
    Doesn't matter. They'll just tell themselves that Blizzard don't care about their problems and are just trying to milk the cow until it dies. Or that they're incompetent and bring out the "If I worked for them I would do X to fix it, it's easy I can't understand why they haven't fixed it yet" kind of armchair devving that really annoys me.
  1. Elevenmad's Avatar
    Players were openly 'Layer hopping' on live, streamers were openly 'Layer hopping' on live and have been doing so since BFA launch, pretty obvious this would happen in Classic and if no one at Blizz could see that then they need to start sacking a ton of people, because this is their fault, Layering is just bad by design and even worse implementation.
  1. Anuibus's Avatar
    why tf is general chat layered
  1. Relapses's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by tangers58 View Post
    ... have you played any blizzard game in the last 10 years? Cynicism is completely warranted. How many times do they have to straight up lie before you stop lapping up the piss?
    Tell me your completely original thoughts about EA, please.
  1. HuxNeva's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by bullseyed View Post
    Queues and layers have nothing to do with each other. A server with 3 layers will never have a queue.

    Layers exist to prevent 20,000 people from stacking on the same quest mob at the same time to DC people or prevent them from clicking on it.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Layering was added to prevent the starting zones from being overrun when everyone logged on at the same time to do the starting quests. It makes sense that by the time you get to 60 and if there are only 4-5 other 60s on your server, you could all be in different layers and essentially have a whole zone to farm by yourself. This could result in those people farming lots of stuff relatively quickly.

    They could then log out and back in and have a 4/5 shot at getting put into a different layer and doing it all over again.

    The problem resolves automatically eventually as more people level up and/or quit.
    Layers reduce queue time, just like extra servers would if people would switch to them.
    Layers allow you to put 50K or 100K players on a realm, without having to later merge servers and all the troubles that involves when there is the expected 95% drop-off, leaving the realms theoretically with a social population target of 2,5-5K.
    It is stated you do not change layers by briefly logging out and back on. I do wonder what their strategy is wrt 'popular' (streamer) layers. Do they put people that logged out in those into a long queue or just put them in another layer that has room?
  1. vsb's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Daish View Post
    this blue poster is ignorant or flat out lying about how the /who command works it can be used to see how many people exist in your layer and can be used to estimate how many layers exist

    on my server ive estimated about 10 different layers 50 is the max result for the /who command but you can include levels or class types to narrow the search and find the total population of each zone and compare it to how many exist within your own layer

    I don't know why you keep photoshopping. I just checked it myself and queries ``z-"Felwood" 1-60'' and ``Felwood 1-60'' return the same results. Stop spreading your propaganda.
  1. bullseyed's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by HuxNeva View Post
    Layers reduce queue time
    I'm sure you know more that Blizzard about their own IP.
  1. Chakah's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Akka View Post
    No.
    If I do a "/who teldrassil 1-6", I have above 50 results.
    If I do a "/who z-"teldrassil" 1-6", I have 35 results.

    By default, the /who is realm-wide. The /who z-"" is layer-by-layer.
    z- is for zone and it was in vanilla. Nothing to do with layers.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by reacher View Post
    I think it was mentioned in a blue post that once you are logged in and put in a layer, you won't leave that layer (or enter another) just by walking or changing zones. In order to change layers you'd have to get grouped with someone who is in another layer, or log out and then back in.
    You can change layers at loading screens as well... Boats, Zeps, and instance portals can cause a transfer.

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