My unique alternative to layering

[Annelie]

So you think Blizzard is lying when they promise that layering will be removed by phase 2?

Yes i do. They wont remove it.

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scata444 is correct. Blizzard has guaranteed that layering will be removed before phase 2. They have also said that if realms are still overpopulated after that and have huge queues they will open up more servers and/or offer free transfers just like they did 14 years ago.

Yea, you belive that if you want.

[Rotted]

You are very naïve if you think it's going to be gone after a few weeks.

Your idea however will only destroy one of the core features of classic, the communities. Communities will form on servers at their current sizes, if you expand that size you give more room for more douchebaggery behavior to appear. By doing server mergers you're essentially giving people a free card to be a douche because at one point or another; a whole new player base will join them that don't know any better.


Classic and BC and had communities and it worked simply because if you were scummy in anyway you were outed for it and you got a rep.

[Charge me Doctor]

Possibly even forced server splits.

Nah, you'll just get your oh-so-wanted queues in population won't drop for some reason.

Raising the cap is an idiotic idea that reeks of private servers. The game was designed and balanced around this cap, by raising that cap you achieve 2 things:
1) not vanilla experience
2) game re-balance required

[Echocho]

Nah, you'll just get your oh-so-wanted queues in population won't drop for some reason.

Raising the cap is an idiotic idea that reeks of private servers. The game was designed and balanced around this cap, by raising that cap you achieve 2 things:
1) not vanilla experience
2) game re-balance required

Private server players have been advocating for changes like this from day 1 and I'm really fucking tired of it. #nochanges, what's so damn hard to grasp about that?? Go play your shitty private servers if you want changes, Lea e Classic alone.

[Charge me Doctor]

Private server players have been advocating for changes like this from day 1 and I'm really fucking tired of it. #nochanges, what's so damn hard to grasp about that?? Go play your shitty private servers if you want changes, Lea e Classic alone.

I mean, just wait another couple of months until private servers sniffed new DB from classic, then go back and play these uncapped, free-of-subscription, pay-to-win private servers

[Hinastorm]

Private server players have been advocating for changes like this from day 1 and I'm really fucking tired of it. #nochanges, what's so damn hard to grasp about that?? Go play your shitty private servers if you want changes, Lea e Classic alone.

We're starting on 1.12 patch. No changes is already out the window, that is not a minor change. Im not arguing for or against anything, just pointing that fact out.

[czarek]

Layering is just software x realm tehnique. Thats what you talking about is more like hardware tehnique. Layering for start is good idea.

[horbindr]

if by starting areas you mean horde/alliance territory, then sure that would probably work.
if by starting areas you mean the lvl 1-5 areas, then it won't work at all.

Hell no. The game was designed with a very specific server cap in mind. Altering that cap will require them to change the entire outside world as a consequence and I don't want them to change a single respawn timer or the mob density.

is there actually a source for that? cause it certainly seems that their "very specific cap" coincides just a bit too coincidentally with the maximum load the servers could handle. and i'm sure that maximum load was different at the start vs the end of development, and then even a few years into release.

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No. Blizzard employees has confirmed that the concurrency cap was a core design principle. They don't want more than ~3k people running around in the world simultaneously and we don't want any changes to the game.

ah, that explains it. this sounds like it was a design decision for classic wow, not for original wow 15 years ago.

[RobertMugabe]

Here's what I prefer. Increase server caps to 5000 and shard only the starting areas. This gives some leeway if populations drop by half after a few weeks without feeling dead. Also once players level a bit and spread out it won't be a big deal, people will enjoy all the activity in each zone. The people who complain about hectic zones past the starting areas can surely wait a few weeks until they die down and the leveling experience is more similar to retail, Classic wasn't made for them anyways.

If queues are excessive then just create a few more servers to match it. If the population drops by 80% as the pessimists predict, which seems unlikely, just merge servers when necessary. It's early enough that it wouldn't have a huge impact.

This is the perfect solution rather than the game-breaking "fix" of sharding the entire world into many layers.

What a shitty idea. It's just more complicated and solves nothing better than layering.

Also "just merge servers" lmao. Can people fucking stop saying this shit as if it's nothing? Creating more servers and then merging is not only a stupid idea, but it creates a billion different issues.

Layering is already an automatic system of servers that will get automatically merged without all the issues. You get to keep your name, guild, friends etc.


Srsly all these threads about how to "fix the launch" just prove that Blizzard knows what they're doing and that they've thought about it more than 5 minutes.

[horbindr]

So you think Blizzard is lying when they promise that layering will be removed by phase 2?

not necessarily lying, but also not promising. their intention is to remove layering. but when the time comes to actually do that the situation may be so different then they expected that their original intended solution won't be viable.

it's all about how willing they are to stick to their word tbh. if a server with 10k people does end up existing, how long are they willing to let the queues be literally days to "encourage" people to use free transfers before they cave in to the outcry and "temporarily" put layering back in until the server is down to a manageable population (which will ofc never happen if layering is still on).

thats the irony, people will probably ask for layering to come back if they can't login. or the general consensus might end up being that layering is better than splitting a community.

or they can simply say: here is a free transfer to a server without layering, but for those of you who are okay with layering you can just stay on this server, make your own choice.

[Echocho]

if by starting areas you mean horde/alliance territory, then sure that would probably work.
if by starting areas you mean the lvl 1-5 areas, then it won't work at all.



is there actually a source for that? cause it certainly seems that their "very specific cap" coincides just a bit too coincidentally with the maximum load the servers could handle. and i'm sure that maximum load was different at the start vs the end of development, and then even a few years into release.

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ah, that explains it. this sounds like it was a design decision for classic wow, not for original wow 15 years ago.

No it's been confirmed by Mark Kern and Kevin Jordan to have been a crucial design decision 15 years ago. They're not going to change that.

[Annelie]

No it's been confirmed by Mark Kern and Kevin Jordan to have been a crucial design decision 15 years ago. They're not going to change that.

It was designed for 500 people on each faction but they upped the limit because 500 was to small. Listen to what Mark Kern actually say.

[FelPlague]

Here's what I prefer. Increase server caps to 5000 and shard only the starting areas. This gives some leeway if populations drop by half after a few weeks without feeling dead. Also once players level a bit and spread out it won't be a big deal, people will enjoy all the activity in each zone. The people who complain about hectic zones past the starting areas can surely wait a few weeks until they die down and the leveling experience is more similar to retail, Classic wasn't made for them anyways.

If queues are excessive then just create a few more servers to match it. If the population drops by 80% as the pessimists predict, which seems unlikely, just merge servers when necessary. It's early enough that it wouldn't have a huge impact.

This is the perfect solution rather than the game-breaking "fix" of sharding the entire world into many layers.

They wanted to shard only the starting areas, but people complained.

sharding just the starting zones would have fixed literally weverything, and avoided this layer hopping in later level zones we have now, but people cried so we got the bigger of two evils.

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No it's been confirmed by Mark Kern and Kevin Jordan to have been a crucial design decision 15 years ago. They're not going to change that.

mark kern is not someone you should trust or beleive in in any matter of the sort, do you forget firefall?

[scata444]

They wanted to shard only the starting areas, but people complained.

sharding just the starting zones would have fixed literally weverything, and avoided this layer hopping in later level zones we have now, but people cried so we got the bigger of two evils.

"Hey Ion, we have an issue. Players are starting to complain about sharding in the starting areas."

"F*k it, we're already spending too many resources on this Classic side-project, not to mention my blood pressure is going up. If these whiners have a problem then we'll give them what they want. Shard the whole f'ing server. Just tell them they thought they didn't want it, but they do."

"Roger."

[ssviolett]

Actually I dont mind server cap to be increased - more people you can group and play with. I really dont want empty servers and 1-2 hours looking for a tank to UBRS. I'd prefer 5 layers with 5000 total on server instead of 3 layers with 3000 ppl total. Game balance wont be changed, but more people to play with.

[FelPlague]

"Hey Ion, we have an issue. Players are starting to complain about sharding in the starting areas."

"F*k it, we're already spending too many resources on this Classic side-project, not to mention my blood pressure is going up. If these whiners have a problem then we'll give them what they want. Shard the whole f'ing server. Just tell them they thought they didn't want it, but they do."

"Roger."

thing is players were saying layering is better, and that its good sharding is gone, all while having been saying "NO SHARDING JUST DO SOMETHING ELSE" Without saying... what else... atleast something that would actually fix the problem.

[zetitup]

Layering is temporary and you will hardley notice it, people are freaking out over nothing.

[scata444]

No it's been confirmed by Mark Kern and Kevin Jordan to have been a crucial design decision 15 years ago. They're not going to change that.

In Kern's stream he says their original goal was a 1000 cap per server because they believed smaller servers would foster a much deeper sense of community. 3000 is just an arbitrary number they came up with to deal with sever loads and costs.

[Echocho]

In Kern's stream he says their original goal was a 1000 cap per server because they believed smaller servers would foster a much deeper sense of community. 3000 is just an arbitrary number they came up with to deal with sever loads and costs.

No the servers could handle up to 4k players. They landed well below that on purpose because of the design philosophy. You have to listen to what these people say otherwise you'll never understand anything LUL

[horbindr]

It was designed for 500 people on each faction but they upped the limit because 500 was to small. Listen to what Mark Kern actually say.

sounds exactly like what is said to me: at the start of the project servers could handle 1000ish people, at the end of the project it turned out they could handle more, so they upped it.