layering = realm hopping on WOW BETA abuse

[Dahij]

You are correct. Effectively, the vast majority of players will only experience layering in the starter zones unless Blizz changes plans and keeps it in for more than a couple weeks. I'm thinking of starter zones as non-endgame-relevant, so I may be choosing a poor term.

No, you're wrong and I guess you just ignored my previous post that explained pretty detailed how it will work, and if that's not enough for you, check my latest post which has some resources that you can read so you understand it better.

[Machismo]

This isn't a big deal, and will get fixed rather quickly.

[Trend]

No, you're wrong and I guess you just ignored my previous post that explained pretty detailed how it will work, and if that's not enough for you, check my latest post which has some resources that you can read so you understand it better.

Your reading comprehension sucks ass bro. I was wrong in what I initially said. Then I responded to someone disagreeing with me by saying "you are correct". Try reading the whole thing next time.

[pinkz]

Layering will only be used for a couple of weeks or maybe a month at the start of Classic WoW, in order to balance the huge influx of players in the same zones.

same zones...can be anywhere

alot of damage to the game can occur in 14 days+, since there will be a oklahoma landrush to 60 will be huge. players know how to get to get there in 4-5 days. 10++ days of players finding where zones layering is being done and using it to farm rare mobs/drops/mats/recipes/etc.

[Dahij]

Your reading comprehension sucks ass bro. I was wrong in what I initially said. Then I responded to someone disagreeing with me by saying "you are correct". Try reading the whole thing next time.

It was a little confusing when you were talking about the vast majority only experiencing it in the starting zones, but I suppose that’s correct, depending on how long it will stay. All we know for sure is that it will be gone by the time phase 2 starts.

[Vampyr78]

Come on, layering is the lesser of the evils, the other alternative is sharding. And it's not great but it's just a short term solution to the launch problem. In the long term layering will be gone before you know it.

[erifwodahs]

How the hell do you realm hop when there's only one realm?? Or is he hopping from the PvP realm to the PvE realm? That should be impossible.

it's not realm hop. It works kind of the same visually, but it's a server hop (server is not a realm) sharding is similar, but layering is way more static. You create a character and it gets tagged by tagID1. Lets say 3k people get tagID1, all zones are full (starting and low level), tagID2 gets issued to other 3k players, and the all the time play together. You can join other tagID by guild change or party change, but otherwise you will play with the same people, share resources with them and so on. When they decide to remove layering they will merge layers and everyone in the realm will be on the same layer. In sharding you could just phase out if there were suddenly too many players in the shard.

Edit:
Also I think it is important to notify blizz about ways to abuse it and that there should be no panic about it. And in case it would be better for me, even if you could hop, because not being able to play for a week is not something I want to experience at the launch as much as I would love to experience all the good perks of old expacs

[Echocho]

server is not a realm

Huh? I'm pretty sure that servers and realms are synonyms when it comes to WoW.

[Zafire]

I don't know why they can't just keep each layer its own separate thing. Treat each layer like its own server. Just let us pick which layer we want, too, so we can still play with friends. If it's going to go away eventually anyway, this seems like the better solution.

[Thunderball]

For people who are not in loop:

1) On beta layering works exactly like sharding, not one layer covering all zones on the continent, but rather multiple small shards, phasing is also entirely random, it's not just joining groups.
2) Layering is active for all zones.
3) Layering will be active for the entirety of Phase 1 most likely, their cut off is when world bosses are introduced which is Phase 2, until then layering will be used.
4) You can abuse the shit out of it.

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it's not realm hop. It works kind of the same visually, but it's a server hop (server is not a realm) sharding is similar, but layering is way more static. You create a character and it gets tagged by tagID1. Lets say 3k people get tagID1, all zones are full (starting and low level), tagID2 gets issued to other 3k players, and the all the time play together.

Just stop. That technology doesnt exist. Layering is sharding.

[Mrkew]

Huh? I'm pretty sure that servers and realms are synonyms when it comes to WoW.

I would assume every realm runs on several servers, virtual and physical.

[Echocho]

I would assume every realm runs on several servers, virtual and physical.

Ah you mean in a technical sense. Yes that is true, every server is virtual, part of a larger physical cluster and every realm is made up of and communicates with multiple virtual servers.

For the playerbase on the other hand server and realm mean the same thing.

[erifwodahs]

Huh? I'm pretty sure that servers and realms are synonyms when it comes to WoW.

You would think so, but technically it's not. I think it used to be like that, but that meant, that if there are lots of connections to one of the server, it's dead because of lags and stuff. Realms are tags, which you get when you create a char in one of the realms, servers are where your data is stored, so let's say you play on Kazzak, there are 15k people trying to log in, server just moves your data from that physical server to another physical server, to split a load, you all are still on Kazzak, but at that time you can't really see players on server nr.1, this is sad side effect, but at least you can play (can u still remember BC/WotLK/Cata launches? ) Some zones are on different servers than others. Especially if it is heavy loaded with players, so server as in such only deals with that zones traffic rather than trying to deal with all continent plus that zone, which reduces lagg.

[Bhanzai]

Doesn't say anywhere there that it's only the start zones, if anything it sounds like any zones with high density. If you're gonna correct someone, at least link the right information.

I did link the right information. It clearly states how long and the reasoning behind it. It's not my responsibility to use any critical thinking skills when reading this to deduce what is going to happen. And frankly I can't be bothered to help people who can't be bothered to help themselves in spending a couple seconds using a google search.

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Layering will only be used for a couple of weeks or maybe a month at the start of Classic WoW, in order to balance the huge influx of players in the same zones.

same zones...can be anywhere

alot of damage to the game can occur in 14 days+, since there will be a oklahoma landrush to 60 will be huge. players know how to get to get there in 4-5 days. 10++ days of players finding where zones layering is being done and using it to farm rare mobs/drops/mats/recipes/etc.

You are being completely dramatic. There isn't going to be "alot of damage to the game".

In order to 'abuse' layering would take a ton of effort and multiple people coordinating together that happen to be on different layers. You understand that this is would be extremely difficult to pull off and not to mention a complete and utter waste of your time while leveling, right? The only thing pre-level 60 that MIGHT be worth doing this for is the arena chest and then at that it would still take a ton of effort to try to pull off. It won't be as easy or simple as it was in the beta video because there will most likely be 10000000x more people playing in the real game, all trying for the chest on each one of the layers that the chest would be on. So going from one layer to the next layer would only mean that you go from one group of people killing each other into another group of people in another layer trying to kill each other for chest.

It is amazing to me that people can't be bothered to actually think about the amount of effort it would take to successfully abuse layering for anything meaningful.

[Maudib]

My understanding was that sharding would only be enabled for starter zones. Do you have some sort of source indicating it'll cover the entire world? I want to read up on this.

That was when they were going to use sharding. Layering is a spinoff of sharding that instead of a shard for each zone, they have a layer for en entire continent.

So all of Azeroth takes two layers. If you join a party that is on another layer... then everyone on your continent will disappear (to you) and you will see a whole new continent's worth of people.

They feel this will be much less jarring than switching zones and the people who you were chasing simply poofed.

So yeah... layering will affect STV. People can swap in and out by joining parties... but it's not THAT easy. Knowing what layer you are going to is difficult.

But for swapping for nodes and chests... this coudl be a bad thing.


However... I fully expect Blizzard to set limitations... like only 1 jump per 15 minutes. Logging in and out will place you in the layer you were on. Etc.

[Pancreatin]

This was predicted when they anounced shardingor how they call it now layering but gues what people would sacrifice the full exprience for temporary convinince.

Blizzard always loves solving problems with solutions that makes more problems than it solves.

They could have just leav sharding in starting zones but i gues they wana save $$ on server costs and make layers instead of opening servers then merging.

[pinkz]

Come on, layering is the lesser of the evils, the other alternative is sharding. And it's not great but it's just a short term solution to the launch problem. In the long term layering will be gone before you know it.

we have sharding in retail WOW, there are no mechanics/exploits to enable looting of a item, etc. standing in one spot over and over.

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That explains why mobs disapear randomly if you invite someone on the same layer as you (that you can see standing next to you) or mobs you are fighting alone just vanish mid fight for no reason.

all makes sense now...days back i was watching the worlds greatest warcraft player streaming classic beta on twitch, prior to seeing the video in my OP. many times he has said things like...how did it vanish? we were like right there? how did they get it? i didn't even see it?

[Mister K]

This was predicted when they anounced shardingor how they call it now layering but gues what people would sacrifice the full exprience for temporary convinince.

Blizzard always loves solving problems with solutions that makes more problems than it solves.

They could have just leav sharding in starting zones but i gues they wana save $$ on server costs and make layers instead of opening servers then merging.

Oh forgot you're a CTO/Engineer that can solve problems better than Blizzard

[erifwodahs]

This was predicted when they anounced shardingor how they call it now layering but gues what people would sacrifice the full exprience for temporary convinince.

Blizzard always loves solving problems with solutions that makes more problems than it solves.

They could have just leav sharding in starting zones but i gues they wana save $$ on server costs and make layers instead of opening servers then merging.

Full experience? What experience? not being able to log in and play because servers are down for a week and after that every mob is contested by 50 other blokes? YES. It's vanilla experience you had every time you created character! Oh wait, most of the players didn't experience vanilla launch and when they got their hands on it, they created a char and went in a live world, with few dozens of players, not few thousands.

[Kelathos]

Layering is used on the entire azeroth...

No, the only time anything "phases" is when youre invited to a group on another layer.

I can tell you from my experience on the Beta, just walk into the Undercity. At the entrance where the zone changes, stop and sit there. You will see every person being phased between Tirisfal Glades and Undercity. It is a rather disjointed experience, and NOT what is advertised.