Would you select a server without layers given the choice?

[Chaelexi]

Do you really think that those people who will stop playing Classic after first few days or weeks, will prefer server with queues? I bet they'll go to server with layers. Only most hardcore fans would go to that server IMO. Sure, few of them will stop playing, that's inevitable, but it'll be "pristine" server, so it'll always attract some people.

There will be ones who do, hell the beta is a ghost town everytime I log on right now. Because there are ones from the no changes crew who never played before and want to "experience" shitty servers until they actually do. Hell I had one co-worker who was all gun ho for classic and was a #nochanges person then got the beta and his tune changed by level 22 and has not logged back into his character.

[De Lupe]

Considering the stuff is only going to be active in the starting zones for the first couple of weeks (and a couple key moments in the future where population would make things literally unplayable), yes. Without question or hesitation. There is literally no downside to it. Me playing the game > "authentic" server instability.

[Chaelexi]

Wrong.

The point from Blizzards perspective is to make money. The way to make money is to grow the playerbase. The playerbase grows when there is a vibrant in-game community to draw in players and hook them. Sharding and / or layers prevent an in-game community from forming so they are 1000% toxic to Blizzard. It is VASTLY preferable to put up with some players complaining about queue times than to outright kill the game. Just open more servers if needed. You can merge them later. It would be better to have quest mobs set to respawn faster for a couple weeks if you have to. What is sacrosanct is the in-game community. Nothing ever must interfere with it.

Blizzard has never merged servers and have put it up on multiple occasions that merging servers is the death of a game as it comes with so many more issues. Losing server identity, dealing with all the people named legolas, guild rankings, etc. The sharding(it is sharding by a different name) with huge opening day servers is the best most logical way to handle initial surge and subsequent exodus afterwords of players. In game communities will form, they had in the beta with this tech available and used. You use big claims like outright kill the game but have no proof just fear mongering.

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Closing and merging dead servers that have no in-game community does not affect communities.

it does not create a community either...... sounds like you do not know what you want.

[stomination]

Eh they layering or sharding or w.e to me will effect the economy that vanilla had.

[Chaelexi]

It was also stated that CRZ would only be used in old zones and not in current content look how that turned out, that shit is everywhere and it's why i stopped playing since retail has no server communities anymore.( and sharding mixed into to it all makes the game non playable for my self)

CRZ and sharding is what has kept the subscription cost at 15 dollars after 15 years. It has allowed blizzard to run less hardware, in a container design. If there is no one in a zone they only need one shard of it running, if there is 2000 player that enter that zone they spin up shards in containers and move on.

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Eh they layering or sharding or w.e to me will effect the economy that vanilla had.

Not really there is no true economy on a server until a couple months in where there has been some people farming gold at 60. Prior to there it is fairly barren in the AH and everything else.

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When I leveled on the stress test server, it was already a clusterfuck, and that was with layering in place and there were queues upon login.

So, only one of those things is not enough. I'd be a nightmare and the OP will realize this after 10mins played.

don't you mean 5 hours in queue?

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Gradual people admission and smooth extension of "possible server's piece"'s size (≈ moderated Queues), closed by rigid boundaries from another similar piece (only with common base of nicknames). Terms like "no automation", "no runaway" (logout or invite, no difference: no alternative, adapt or die - these are your options) should be fulfilled otherwise people won't take them seriously. Initial stage... tourists... it's all nonsense. If it will be necessary to unite "server's piece" - they will adapt and be patient; main thing is that conditions are never violated. Or there're rules and everyone obeys them, or there're no rules and everyone doesn’t care... and this we have already passed at retail.

Classic doesn't need "cross realm" technology, Classic need patient and responsible people and since presence of marked technology doesn't help with that, but rather vice versa - it's not needed.

<<BACK|FORWARD>>

Yes not letting people play will only get people not playing.....once again your idea is trash. And Layering is not Cros-realm tech, it is the modern way of programming quality effective design where zones run in containers and they can spin up and take down zones through automated thresholds that improves everyone's experience.

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that was just for the dmeo, they stated that, we had limited time and so they had sharding in the 15 zones as to make it so people could actuallty play the limited time demo.
they said that it would not be in the 15 zones on live.

It will be active in zones as long as it is required to be stable. If a server had 800+ players in STV then you bet it will be layered.

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Problem is, some people here love sharding. But because it's called Layering, they take advantage of that and try to paint it as if it's an undeniably necessary system. They're egoistical and can't see past their own needs. They can't possibly wait 15 mins in a queue even if that makes the experience better for everyone in the long run.

Then they realize they're going to have to wait 30 mins to find a tank and quit. This game just isn't for them, but before they quit they'll make sure to ruin it for everybody else.

You realize that queues on big servers in vanilla were a lot longer than 15 minutes. I know Shattered hand(US) at some points had queues of 2-4 hours.

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Layering has nothing to do with login servers. It only affects you once you pass 2 queues: realmlist queue and world server queue (aka realm queue). You will still get queues.

Layering will allow servers the ability to have larger population bases, there for lowering the possibility of queuing and instead of a server becoming queued they just spin up a new layer.

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There are better solution. Mark each server in multiple group that will be merged later, only 1 unique name per group for easier merging, done.
Or maybe a layering system where you can only choose your layer at the beginning and can't switch no matter what.

That does not solve anything though because a certain server in the merge group will become popular and now there are queues, over population, etc and now you have no method of escaping these issues. dynamically assigning things works better.

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Sharding existed long before WoW and what layering is. Server communities were dead long before CRZs.

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No, the only better solution is dynamic respawns, but Blizzard is not doing that.

That does not solve over population.

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There is no evidence that this attitude ever materialized in vanilla.

There were very long queues to play at times. Yet the playerbase just kept growing wildly. So obviously, long queues were absolutely no problem whatsoever. As it turns out, people were willing to wait. (They might be even more willing to wait today now that they can sit in queue and watch a streamer play). What we can say is that when they destroyed the in-game community, THEN people started leaving.

So the evidence tells us long queues are undesirable but not game-killing. Lack of in-game community (which layering would help to achieve) is game-killing.

I didn't make up these rules. These are just actual observations of human behavior when it comes to playing WoW.

There is a different style of gamer now than 15 years ago and this is the market they are trying to capture. If someone tries to logon in peak time and can not get in they will move on to another game or something else completely. Hell people get made when a league queue hits 5 mintues.

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Well seeing people vanish in front of you and pop up from nowhere is phasing. They phase in and out. You know, phasing.
Anyway if that is your biggest gripe i will change my wording; "Layering is exactly the same as sharding, except bigger scale". Happy?

There are 3 tools current wow uses for 3 different situations:
Phasing: it allows the world to be different depending on the stage of a story you are in. You complete a quest the the world changes around you **Story telling tool**
CRZ: Attempts to balance server population around players to ensure there is enough players available for content at all times in most zones. ***This solves the low population issues***
Sharding: This is a tool that solves 2 problems, first is the problem of over population of zones, by opening a new shard container when zones hit certain populations. the second problem was the physical out of game issues of hardware and management of costs. CRZ and sharding put together allows blizzard to run less hardware to provide the game as CRZ shards are automatically spun up and taken down inside containers(a programming technique to allow seamless provisioning of virtual hardware) for zones that have people in them. Thus they no longer have to run entire servers.

[Nakur-]

I remember coming home from school at 17:30, running up to my room, logging on to get in the queue, go eat diner with my family, get back to my pc, still had about an hour of queue left, start warning raidleader i might be late, ask him not to give away my spot etc...
No thx, ill accept layering for those first few zones or whatever.

[Chaelexi]

For more flexibly "consequences'" manipulation. That will limit duration of this period itself to devs (and this is important, see quote further), which are exectly only those, who need it. Hence the answer to next part of the quote: this period and technology aren't needed by players, devs need them, therefore, if we were talking about “friends” as a priority, then we'd start from (at worst case, connect after certain period) servers and no talk about any shards/layers (but as it turns out, that they consider it "unworthy" and difficult task, everything ended with such discussion). Rules are the same for everyone and devs are here only to ensure that they are respected and being followed, but not to change them any time at will completely, but they have lo-o-ong forgotten about it.

As for "friends' problem", this what (for example) “buffer period” could be needed for. 1st period is needed in order to get rid of tourists, and patients with "go,go,go"-diagnosis. If this is really important to you, then you should understand only one simple truth: there is no hurry, if you aren't sure, then be patient until stability is established. One doesn't need to be like person tormented by thirst/hunger, who, in an attempt to quench, can cause self fatal harm. This is just a game

I repeat:Layers don't solve any such problems, only delay its solution, and main evidence is right there *pointing at retail*

Regarding thread in general... this is just local forum, we're only discussing here, and no matter what we'll decide now, how we quarrel with each other - no one will ever take us into account, when deciding what to do (this won't magically turn any our solution into devs' one). It's their decision and their responsibility for its adoption and consequences, it has always been and always will be. Have patience/comprehension with each other. This isn't worth it.
Still, just your opinion

It's ok you are just out to ruin experiences and suggest implementation of poor design

[Kokolums]

There is a different style of gamer now than 15 years ago and this is the market they are trying to capture. If someone tries to logon in peak time and can not get in they will move on to another game or something else completely. Hell people get made when a league queue hits 5 mintues.

I refute that argument all day long.

Gamers have NEVER changed. I have never seen it. They want a social experience. I will agree that they won't SAY that, but gamers also don't know what they want. What they say they want and what they actually want are 2 different things.

I'll point to Diablo, the original game, back in the mid 1990s. We learned a lot about gamer behavior back then and it still perfectly applies today. Back then, Diablo was a solo game and installed on your PC. That meant you could hack the game files. So the first thing everyone did was hack the game to give themselves god mode with god weapons and armor. Then they skipped the entire game and killed Diablo in 5 minutes. They felt that addict's rush. Then they looked around and said "this game sucks!" and quit forever.

This led to a plea to Blizzard to stop people from hacking because it was ruining the experience. The plea was based on the idea that gamers don't know what they want and cannot control themselves. So out came Diablo 2, which brought us the client/server system to help stop hacking and provided a baseline for a more social experience. People LOVED it. Although, the antihacking measures were dodgy.

This led to WoW which built upon what the accomplished with D2 and provided a more robust anti-hacking game with more social features.

But instead of hacking, a lot of gamers resorted to crying, bitching, and whining to nerf everything and make it easier. But again, that's borne out of gamers not knowing what they want. And gamers won't SAY they want a social experience, but its still critical to success.

[erifwodahs]

But Classic with layering isn't Classic. It's not the same game, and therefore doesn't provide the same experience as Classic would/will without layering. The full game, the real deal verison will actually be available after layering's gone.

People, be it new or old players, are going to judge the game within the first few days/weeks, and they're going to only get to judge Classic with layering, and all the effects that will come from it (which already have been shown and there's more on the way).

We've seen before where very similar techs (sharding/CRZ etc) lead to, and in what ways they affected the games. These systems always have hit the game the most in the community, MMO/immersion aspect. All for the sake of providing an easier access to it's gameplay related content (which isn't what makes WoW successful, cause if it were, modern WoW xpacks would be much better received than they are. The most recent ones even had very smooth launches, yet still weren't nearly as successful as older WoW's versions because the modern games lack the MMORPG feeling, which early WoW's design absolutely nailed more than any other game).

The aspect Classics's and early WoW's success depends on the most is the community in that one Azeroth, cause the whole game is designed around it. It's not a game that is about "good gameplay" or fantastic quests. All of the content in Classic only is, and has been so amazing because it gently pushed people to form bonds and communities as they played the game in a fantasy RPG setting with a believable world to call home.All of which layering disrupts.

Classic is not vanilla. Nor private servers were vanilla. Vanilla was once, it was progression of patches and ended when TBC was launched. Classic is what blizzard makes it to be.
Unplayable lags, game breaking bugs, macros which are equal to botting. Projected added textures, those were in vanilla, even you had exact same client and patch progression, current addon makers could make your char play itself. Blizzard had to update their client so priests couldn't use weak aura to have all dotable targets on the frame, no one button macros, no auto healing/buffing. Projected textures were a huge thing. It would all be in game if they released it as it was in 2004 but this classic is not vanilla

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Problem is, some people here love sharding. But because it's called Layering, they take advantage of that and try to paint it as if it's an undeniably necessary system. They're egoistical and can't see past their own needs. They can't possibly wait 15 mins in a queue even if that makes the experience better for everyone in the long run.

Then they realize they're going to have to wait 30 mins to find a tank and quit. This game just isn't for them, but before they quit they'll make sure to ruin it for everybody else.

Well, problem is some people hate layering, because it's similar to sharding, they take advantage of that and try to paint it if it's an undeniably horrible system. They 're egoistical and can't see past their own needs. They are ready to wait in ques for 30+ mins even if it makes it way better gameplay experience for everyone when Classic launches and potentially in the long run, because new players are not turned away from day 1.

Then they realize that their friend who is party healer won't make it in time because they are 1h in que and they will start to moan at blizzard about servers. This game is NOT ONLY for them, but they will make sure to ruin it for everybody.

[Miena]

Classic is not vanilla

There are experiences that can't be replicated from Vanilla into Classic, simply due to time changing the environment in which we'll receive the game.
There are however basic game design foundations that can absolutely be upheld. The game design foundations which make Classic a faithful recreation of Vanilla.

That base game design of the original game never, at any point, had anything like layering interfere with it. If it did, it would be a faithful recreation of the game (!) to put layering in it again now, but it's never been there before. It's an entirely new feature of Classic, that never has been seen in the original game at any point.

Therefore, it changes the game into something else, especially much so because of layering working from within the game itself. Since layering stems from sharding, it has a dynamic element to it which will keep altering the games world each play session/each time you group up with someone from a different layer/each time you get dc'ed/each time a layer gets full and needs to make a new one.
This invites a whole new array of playstyles that will make use of the system to speed up the leveling process, gather resources, avoid PvP ganks, etc. All of which leads to significant changes in social dynamics as well, compared to the original design, because the whole game could get sped up and it's focus shifted from enjoying the journey, to powering through while this system is there, ready to be used for powerleveling.

Layering originates from a set of systems used before in retail to allow for more efficient gameplay (sharding/CRZ/LFD/LFR etc). It will once more support this efficient gameplay style, but again at the expense of that which has driven so many away from WoW altogether with each of those modern additions : the lack of community, and watering down of the long term social significance of your actions and relationships in the game.

We might even end up getting Addons or 3rd party websites, which will attempt to make layer hopping as efficiently as possible - similarly to server hopping addons we got in retail WoW.
Are those addons going to be allowed? Or are they going to be banned because they are antithetical to Classic/Vanilla? If those addons are banned, what does that tell us about layering?

Additionally, Layering is also not even in the same ballpark as queues. Queues do their job entirely outside of the games world.
Layering is intrusive in the games world to do be able to do it's job, and alters the whole experience because of that, as the games design isn't meant to have a system like that meddle with it. It's not designed to work with it at all. It's designed to accommodate a normal realm population that stays static within the world at all times.
As in, if someone logs in, they are there in the world somewhere, always able to be found by someone who's also online on that realm.

Layering won't allow this to happen on the regular basis it needs to to provide the same experience the original design lead to. It's interference will hit Classic where it hurts the most - the social dynamics, which the game carefully was crafted around to make sure those are it's strongest point, and the one people get hooked on the most. And it worked out beyond what they expected themselves. The games design decisions ended up saving the whole company from closing down.

I said before with good reason:

"But Classic with layering isn't Classic. " Not

Classic is not vanilla

Why did i say that?

Because, if they go with layering, we are presented 2 versions of what's supposed to be a faithful recreation of the original games design.

1.) Classic with layering, which provides it's own experience, echoing modern decisions from retail WoW. It provides more efficient gameplay and quicker access to it. It also, again, works using a massive pool of players that gets interchanged based on demand to provide the latter. A design choice that is distinctly different from...

2.) Classic, which will be based on the original games foundational design, and provide the experience as authentically as actually possible in our current times, assisted mostly by their massively improved tech that will smooth out the launch. This full, authentic version of the game will only be available weeks or months after release, depending on when they decide to take out layering (max start of P2).

That's just a simple observation of what the game actually is. And right now, according to this poll and elsewhere, it would seem there's suddenly a portion of new people actually asking for a new Classic with Layering version over the original Classic. (#nochanges? hello?)
Which i find odd to say the least, considering there's been a massive effort for years to make Blizzard release Classic, not layered Classic, yet the newer audience is even willing to use retail like methods on this old game solely to fit modern expectations better.

[Chaelexi]

I refute that argument all day long.

Gamers have NEVER changed. I have never seen it. They want a social experience. I will agree that they won't SAY that, but gamers also don't know what they want. What they say they want and what they actually want are 2 different things.

I'll point to Diablo, the original game, back in the mid 1990s. We learned a lot about gamer behavior back then and it still perfectly applies today. Back then, Diablo was a solo game and installed on your PC. That meant you could hack the game files. So the first thing everyone did was hack the game to give themselves god mode with god weapons and armor. Then they skipped the entire game and killed Diablo in 5 minutes. They felt that addict's rush. Then they looked around and said "this game sucks!" and quit forever.

This led to a plea to Blizzard to stop people from hacking because it was ruining the experience. The plea was based on the idea that gamers don't know what they want and cannot control themselves. So out came Diablo 2, which brought us the client/server system to help stop hacking and provided a baseline for a more social experience. People LOVED it. Although, the antihacking measures were dodgy.

This led to WoW which built upon what the accomplished with D2 and provided a more robust anti-hacking game with more social features.

But instead of hacking, a lot of gamers resorted to crying, bitching, and whining to nerf everything and make it easier. But again, that's borne out of gamers not knowing what they want. And gamers won't SAY they want a social experience, but its still critical to success.

SO please tell me how sitting in a queue for 2 hours(i remember the 2 hour queues in vanilla) is a gripping social experience?

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There are experiences that can't be replicated from Vanilla into Classic, simply due to time changing the environment in which we'll receive the game.
There are however basic game design foundations that can absolutely be upheld. The game design foundations which make Classic a faithful recreation of Vanilla.

That base game design of the original game never, at any point, had anything like layering interfere with it. If it did, it would be a faithful recreation of the game (!) to put layering in it again now, but it's never been there before. It's an entirely new feature of Classic, that never has been seen in the original game at any point.

Therefore, it changes the game into something else, especially much so because of layering working from within the game itself. Since layering stems from sharding, it has a dynamic element to it which will keep altering the games world each play session/each time you group up with someone from a different layer/each time you get dc'ed/each time a layer gets full and needs to make a new one.
This invites a whole new array of playstyles that will make use of the system to speed up the leveling process, gather resources, avoid PvP ganks, etc. All of which leads to significant changes in social dynamics as well, compared to the original design, because the whole game could get sped up and it's focus shifted from enjoying the journey, to powering through while this system is there, ready to be used for powerleveling.

Layering originates from a set of systems used before in retail to allow for more efficient gameplay (sharding/CRZ/LFD/LFR etc). It will once more support this efficient gameplay style, but again at the expense of that which has driven so many away from WoW altogether with each of those modern additions : the lack of community, and watering down of the long term social significance of your actions and relationships in the game.

We might even end up getting Addons or 3rd party websites, which will attempt to make layer hopping as efficiently as possible - similarly to server hopping addons we got in retail WoW.
Are those addons going to be allowed? Or are they going to be banned because they are antithetical to Classic/Vanilla? If those addons are banned, what does that tell us about layering?

Additionally, Layering is also not even in the same ballpark as queues. Queues do their job entirely outside of the games world.
Layering is intrusive in the games world to do be able to do it's job, and alters the whole experience because of that, as the games design isn't meant to have a system like that meddle with it. It's not designed to work with it at all. It's designed to accommodate a normal realm population that stays static within the world at all times.
As in, if someone logs in, they are there in the world somewhere, always able to be found by someone who's also online on that realm.

Layering won't allow this to happen on the regular basis it needs to to provide the same experience the original design lead to. It's interference will hit Classic where it hurts the most - the social dynamics, which the game carefully was crafted around to make sure those are it's strongest point, and the one people get hooked on the most. And it worked out beyond what they expected themselves. The games design decisions ended up saving the whole company from closing down.

I said before with good reason:

"But Classic with layering isn't Classic. " Not

Why did i say that?

Because, if they go with layering, we are presented 2 versions of what's supposed to be a faithful recreation of the original games design.

1.) Classic with layering, which provides it's own experience, echoing modern decisions from retail WoW. It provides more efficient gameplay and quicker access to it. It also, again, works using a massive pool of players that gets interchanged based on demand to provide the latter. A design choice that is distinctly different from...

2.) Classic, which will be based on the original games foundational design, and provide the experience as authentically as actually possible in our current times, assisted mostly by their massively improved tech that will smooth out the launch. This full, authentic version of the game will only be available weeks or months after release, depending on when they decide to take out layering (max start of P2).

That's just a simple observation of what the game actually is. And right now, according to this poll and elsewhere, it would seem there's suddenly a portion of new people actually asking for a new Classic with Layering version over the original Classic. (#nochanges? hello?)
Which i find odd to say the least, considering there's been a massive effort for years to make Blizzard release Classic, not layered Classic, yet the newer audience is even willing to use retail like methods on this old game solely to fit modern expectations better.

SO you want servers that start out at 3000 active login caps and will be packed at launch with long queues but after the first month when the first round of tourists leave it will be at a population of 3-4000, and after 6 months you may have an active community of 1000 players and will consistently shrink.

You know what the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Guess what Blizzard did in Vanilla and early expansions, the same thing over and over again and expected different results and they have learned from that. Having a hard launch of a game without a mechanism or mechanisms to mitigate overpopulation of zones leads to lag, instability, disconnects, long queues and poor experiences. Sharding/layering, etc is that mechanism to mitigate this problem, it allows them to have multiple instances of the same server from the descriptions you will join a shard at that will be your shard until you join a group that is in a different shard. I would not be surprised if a guild is also tied to a shard so if you join a guild, the guilds shard will be your shard. As the tourists leave they will condense these shards until they get to the point where there is not layers. So the be able to "shard hop" you will need to know people in different layers since there is no group finder to spam in. The only variable that is truthfully unknown at this point is will there be cross layer chat or are you limited to your layer.

[The Stormbringer]

Gimme Layers. They'll only last a month or two, tops, and will be far less frustrating than endless queues in the beginning. I want to actually PLAY THE GAME, not sit in a waiting line. Shocking, right?

[HoodKazekage]

People exaggerate so much.. I've never wait for "4 hours" for a que.... at most it was an hour. And remember guys #nochanges right?

[erifwodahs]

The poll favors layering, meaning the majority of MMOC wants it. Overall picture might be even more scaled for layering, as casual gamers don't really sit on forums anyway

[Funnyqt]

Really tough call. The release of Classic is going to be nothing like the release of Vanilla or even new servers during Vanilla. There are going to be so many people trying to get online at the same time, I think it is going to be truly mind blowing for the peeps down in Irvine. I guess I am in favor of it for this particular release, but I truly hope it is eliminated swiftly to prevent abuse.

[polarus-wow]

No. I'd rather play than wait in a queue.

ding ding ding.

Layers is an elegant solution to a very tricky problem. I don't understand how this is still a matter of contention for some people.

[vsb]

ding ding ding.

Layers is an elegant solution to a very tricky problem. I don't understand how this is still a matter of contention for some people.

This solution brings a lot of other problems and significantly changes the game.

[Jabakaga]

People exaggerate so much.. I've never wait for "4 hours" for a que.... at most it was an hour. And remember guys #nochanges right?

I remember in TBC I sometimes had to wait up to 2 hours in queue. I got home from work, first thing I did was to log in so I could play the game after dinner. And I remember constantly checking if I was still in queue or not because often it did while I was either eating or doing something else and had logged me out so I had do this all over again so noooo. Give us layering able to play the game beats "authentic" experience....

[Echocho]

This solution brings a lot of other problems and significantly changes the game.

Yes and without it we'll have dead servers once the retail tourists leave. I prefer to not have dead servers.

[Geckomayhem]

The spread here is surprising. I'd rather not have layers as no matter how great and short-term the tech, it is still a change that will affect early gameplay and the people you interact with. How are you going to invite guild members to the guild from another layer of they are put into another layer before you form the guild? Can you get their signatures even if they're on a different layer?