"Layering", new technology replacing "sharding" - Only for the 1st couple weeks

[Vakna]

It wont be hundred of thousands on a single server,it will be several thousand and if im not mistaken eve onlind or somethibg like had one of the best servers there is

You are severely underestimating the amount of people that are going to pile into Classic if only just to try it out the first day or two. I honestly wont be surprised if the login servers just up and crash.

[Alkizon]

I still think that letting people in "portions" is the only right decision. Stuff that OP describes is essentially a common verbiage since it doesn't have rigid boundaries, this all same rubber/stretching/porous(/CRZ?) garbage. So they won't have normal control over growth of population and polarity of servers. Sadly. Something like these "layers" called “channels”, only in this (WoW) case they continue to be “dynamic/semi-automated” (what is exactly main sign of shards-alike stuff and most of its disadvantages, = not your choice ≈ no choice, unfixed = insignificant), which makes them even worse than normal channels (if forget for a short time players' self-(determination/association) hanging in the air in relation to server) — it takes away their (channels) individual names and player's control over switching between them.

And also, if believe written stuff, then this idea, even if it's “rethought”, but still same masked sharding, is automatically spreading to whole continent now without fear and forgetting those conversations about "just starting zones only"...too much automation, too much uncertainty, too much convention, too much confusion... not a fan, absolutely not a fan. Even more incomprehensible then, what they win by this.

What prevents them from making Generated+ “hard” sub-servers with <layers size (or even 1/3 of it)> accounts online after all (choice of which player can control when creating character there) and processing each separately, while limiting them by invisible “nicknames'” frames within several ones with prospect of merging, and then (after 1st phase?), if in absence of need (otherwise combine those that will most complement each other), simply remove these frames and servers will continue to exist in happened state? Everything is better than shards (no-no-no for automatic = no control, no-no-no for porous boundaries(≈CRZ?) = abuse/exploit/choice negligibility, these are 2 required conditions), no matter how you called them.

There shouldn't be any world layers associated with individual character progress, server is united and only measure of progress... just NONE. Therefore, "phased" parts basis world organization (and here I'm talking not about it only, but about all similar mechanics) is unacceptable, it doesn’t matter if it’s “bronze dragons time travel help” or some other nonsense, people are obliged to see each other being within same territory except for intervenes directly by lore's supported mechanics (abilities/magic/other dimensions), or it had to be instances' content - scenarios. It was in this way how competitive spirit "between servers" (it's hard for guilds, of course, since beta testing advantage, but it possible for open world progression - where each participant contribution is important) was achieved, and it makes no sense to pay attention to "defectors" if process of "run-away" itself is as difficult as possible (almost impossible, very expensive, has certain substantial penalties in terms of time and amount of allowed taken junk)... but now they have CRZ, micro-transactions with tokens, phasing, shards and other rubbish, with which they help themselves to close their eyes to all real problems associated with current "accounts" activity.

There should be no possibility to exit, otherwise whole essence of community is lost (this isn't session bull$hit, we're talking about long-term cohabitation) - need for mutual constantly adaptation (individual or collective, but adaptation). Possibility of easy (CRZ&Co stuff) or uncontrolled (automatic) runaway/escape devalues ​​decision made ⇒ choice ⇒ serious attitude to it ⇒ need to make such choice and to at least somehow associate yourself with concept of social adaptation in closed group, and it means that you don't get formation of similar experience, skills, learning ⇒ changes all your subsequent behavior as part of a team (same stuff true for wPvP events)... etc. So, same fundamental mistake turns WM (same as CR-LFR(G)-alike stuff), into absolutely useless piece of $hit in social sense.
(this, however, doesn't negate their additional silly consequences for game design as a whole, but complements them very much).

tl;dr That's sad, sad, sad...

<<BACK|FORWARD>>

[PavelGolub]

Well i think its a good idea to start with for number of reasons that i've seen on couple of fresh starts on P-Servers.
You can't level up without standing on one spot and not being able to find 1 monster to kill , you have a que of 10 people waiting on a quest item that suppose to re spawn once every 5 minutes and a lot of things of that sort for the first 1.5 month when you have a bigger gap between the "leveling groups".
And i think it will save you so much time on the log in .... just think about the amount of people and the waiting times to log in to your servers will be on the first 2 weeks if they wont do the layers you wont be able to log out without the penalty of at least 2 hours wait time.

As long as its the first 1,2 months i think its a great idea.

[Vilendor]

y... you know they have had these since mop right?
it did not take them 15 years, they have had this for 8 years...
just layers are a slightly altered version of sharding for classic specificly.

y... you know sharding isn't world instances, right? Layers are world instances, sharding is a fucked up shitty version of them. So yeah, it took them 15 years

[arr0gance]

Honestly, Blizzard would've been better off letting people assume it was sharding tech then later coming out and clarifying they changed it slightly. Labeling the technology they're using just gives ammunition to the autistic *ahem* extremely picky "no changes" crowd who simply can't live with the idea that Blizzard is not stupid enough to release a broken game.

[Orwell7]

Why can't WE, the players, decide which shard/layer/etc we want to play on?
Just right click on my portrait -> shards -> then select one from the list. The list can be dynamic, of course.

The technology was present in 2005 Everquest 2!! It's a shame that almost 15 years later Blizzard devs want to shit out their own thing. Because players are dumb and we cannot make our own decisions.

More freedom to players -> the more happy they are, why can't they see that?
In God of War (2018, numerous game of the year awards) there are gateways everywhere you go.
WoW declines in numbers -> lets remove gateways because its FUN

[Nnyco]

so... .gr....group with them.... that easy.... seriously this is vanilla, i thoguht grouping with people was like the main thing

Its nice to see your friends randomly in town, i couldnt give a crap about if i see the same player i never talk to ever twice or thrice.

[RobertMugabe]

Because server communities are one of the absolute cornerstones of classic WoW.

Layering doesn't negatively affect this though. Layers are basically realms that were designed to be eventually merged together, without all the many many issues and general difficulties of a normal realm merge.

Because over-camped spawns are not actually an issue as long as you're having fun with other people, and if they really feel the spawns are a problem, increasing the spawn rates is a million times less invasive of a solution.

Dynamic spawn rates can cause sooooo much abuse and completely ruin the economy. This is a terrible suggestion.

Because when things happen on my server I like to be able to participate without having to find an invite to the correct "layer".

Without layering you'd be just stuck on a small server forever and won't participate in anything that happens on other servers. I don't see what bad layering is doing here.

Because I don't want to miss out on potential social experiences that I should be having (but will never know I missed) simply because Blizzard has no clue.

Again layering doesn't affect that

Because participating in a giant packed server launch is a ton of fun, and a very memorable experience. Nostalrius was an absolute blast on launch day. People were yelling about how great it feels to be back in classic, grouping up for simple quests, and even though mobs were hard to tag, we all had fun.

Layers will still be massive and Nostalrius' launch was a complete disaster for weeks, I was there. It launched with about 5k concurrent players (according to the Nost team) and the game crashed every couple minutes. Realms will be way bigger too than what they were in vanilla, as said by Blizzard.

Anybody who thinks this is a good thing DOES NOT UNDERSTAND what classic is about.

No, you just have no fucking idea what you're talking about. You don't seem to understand what layering is and what it's trying to do, like you didn't even spend 5 minutes thinking about this issue at all (seeing how you're suggesting dynamic spawns) AND yet you have a strong opinion on that and call the devs retards. It's funny how people like you are all having their own ideas on how Blizzard should do the launch and yet all these ideas are just terrible when you actually start thinking about them for like 5 minutes.

If you take a look through my post history you will find about 90% of it is about classic from long before its announcement.

Who fucking cares?

I'm 100% sure that I love and care way more about this game than Blizzard, currently being helmed by J Allen "You Think You Do But You Don't" Brack, and manned by a bunch of people who weren't even at the company when the game was developed.

You don't know who these people are at all dude. And you haven't developed this game either, so why tf are you bringing this up???

Sorry, but your post makes 0 sense.

[Rapti]

Totally not a fan of that since beginning but it does beat current tech hands down.

[Mosotti]

Great idea. Not let's see how big the layers will be. I'm still not going to play in the first month, layers or not layers, it's still a shitshow...

[Overdispersion]

Sweet so if a quest mob is dead on my layer I can just hop to another one.

Sounds like classic to me!

Yeah they should delay layer hopping with like 10 minutes so that people who wanna really wanna level together still have an incentive to wait 10 minutes and makes layer hopping for quest mobs almost pointless since you'd be better off just waiting for respawn than trying to layer hop.

[Raven]

Sharding and Layering is pretty much same shit diffrent name, Layering is like sharding but you wont be moved around betwen shards, so you wont notice players just vanish infront of you when they get moved from Shard A to Shard B.

Layering is pretty much a sharding v 2.0 with a new cool name.

[Mosotti]

To be honest I would have preferred normal servers, then real server merges if the population gets too low. Things have evolved in the past 15 years, you don't need to have a server as a standalone physical machine.

[Roar-Powah]

Good thing then that layering is only temporary for a few weeks as we all get through the low level zones but then will go away.

"Capping servers" as your proposed solution will just make tons of dead servers in a matter of month. An utter failure.

Vanilla pop was 3k total, 3k each faction and then locking the server means even if you have 50% to 75% of the server leave you still have a very healthy server population and you can open the server back up until it hits the max. By the sounds of it, Blizzard don't intend on opening many servers up for classic in each region so i cannot see this being a issue at all.

[MardestyGSOG]

Better than sharding I guess. It gives the benefit of sharding but drastically reduces the community killing aspects of sharding, while opening the door to merge layers together and keep a server lively when the community begins to reduce later on. I kinda like it

[HulkSmasher]

I'm a believer. This sounds like a near perfect solution to address overcrowding at launch.

[Orby]

Okay so this is how I see this layering, it does seem more better than shading but I am still iffy that it exists.

With sharding you are constantly phasing in and out in zones, mobs, NPC's and minerals sometimes phasing within the same zone. Even when in a large 40 man group, they are also affected..

With Layering you get none of that. Layering is more like a realm within a realm. but on two different sides, unlike sharing which you are constantly changing in and out of phased areas non stop. The only way you can be phased out with layering is if you join a group with someone else on that phased side

while I do like this idea I still have many problems.

1) It is still a huge dampener on the community aspect of the game. I don't like the idea talking to someone in trade chat who is in the same city as me wanting to make him some potions all the while he is on another plain of existence.

2) Say you wanna make two large 40 man raids onto Orgrimmar. will one of those groups get pushed onto another layer? If so that sucks

3) Also is it permanent? I havent looked into that yet, are they planning of getting rid of it later?

I do think this is better than sharding, most certainly but that doesn't mean I still don't have concerns. It is worth testing at least...

[Big Thanks]

Sharding and Layering is pretty much same shit diffrent name, Layering is like sharding but you wont be moved around betwen shards, so you wont notice players just vanish infront of you when they get moved from Shard A to Shard B.

Layering is pretty much a sharding v 2.0 with a new cool name.

NO, Layering is much better because you are able to constantly see the same people since lvl 1 to max level.
Always seeing the same people.
It will be like a mini-server community.

But hey, i want to see this gone as soon as possible as much as you do

[HulkSmasher]

3) Also is it permanent? I havent looked into that yet, are they planning of getting rid of it later?

All layering is removed in Phase 2!

[Big Thanks]

Better than sharding I guess. It gives the benefit of sharding but drastically reduces the community killing aspects of sharding, while opening the door to merge layers together and keep a server lively when the community begins to reduce later on. I kinda like it

See? this guy knows whats up @Raven