Layering vs Dynamic Respawns

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

You don't want dynamic respawns in a cave, trust me.

[lonely zergling]

Both have issues but layering has less of an impact on the gameplay itself.

[Miena]

You would prefer for servers to be unstable messes that crash constantly and are down for long periods of time? Just look at what the stress test did to people. Unless you think lag magically goes away on new servers.

The fact we get layering proves that their tech is so strong, that their servers can realistically handle multiple realm populations at once on just 1 server. Give that type of powerful server a normal population of 3k, and it won't even break a sweat. They've confirmed there can be 1k people in Elwynn Forest alone flawlessly. We are not back in time with wooden servers. 15 years have passed. In 2019 your concern doesn't find a reason to exist anymore tech wise.

About the stress test. Let's actually be realistic here. The reason the servers were pushed to the limits and beyond, was because it was a stress test. That's what it's for. That said, the reason the server was struggling (aside from them overloading it on purpose) is BECAUSE they try to fit in multiple server's worth of population into one realm, at the same time. That's why they need to have the stress tests, to make sure that if they went with the layering approach, it would go pretty smooth as they let in a massive amount of people from Day 1.

If a realm had only the OG vanilla design of about 2.5-3k players per realm, they'd be more than fine tech wise, and probably wouldn't even need those stress tests because 1 server can easily handle that load alone already.

So no, this is not a tech issue at all. It's a server population management issue. And right now, they're looking to alter the whole game's experience to MAYBE have ~3k players on 1 realm by the end of P2, or if you have high faith in them and their prediction, couple weeks in.

If their prediction is wrong, we end up right where we started, except the damage is already heavy and done, and you'll end up giving people the unavoidable server management unpleasantries that you tried to avoid in the first place, by handholding everyone into a "stable" server.
Fact is, people are people, and no matter your server, if a lot of them decide to move off for whatever reason, you're gonna have a problem.
One i experienced first hand when my raiding guild ended up on a dead server, and i had to manage it through that mess and off to another realm. But it was not as bad as people try to make the issue out to be, and it's so completely blown out of proportion you end up willing to sacrifice the autheniticity of the very long awaited game so many devoted fans had been asking for.

It's not worth it at all, it's not staying true to Vanillas GAME DESIGN (i'm NOT asking for a timemachine here), and people will be rightfully fucking pissed when they log in expecting the Vanilla game in Classic, and they see the consequences of the new feature unfold from Day 1, on top of having big queues, only to find out they're gonna have to deal with it for a while..weeks, or months. And those queues will be back again, in full on force, if the realms haven't died down enough by the start of P2. Yikes.

[Hey There Guys its Metro]

They don't accomplish the same thing, so not much point asking this question.
Both should be available for launch, honestly.
Layering is just there to smooth out the massive amount of population in each zone, which might crash the server.
Dynamic Respawns are present to make sure you can actually do something other than run around once you are online on a stable server.

If they JUST did dynamic respawns, they would likely still be stuck with massive server concerns.

We still don't know what their plans are for server count though.

[Redroniksre]

The fact we get layering proves that their tech is so strong, that their servers can realistically handle multiple server populations at once on just 1 realm. Give that type of powerful server a normal population of 3k, and it won't even break a sweat. They've confirmed there can be 1k people in Elwynn Forest alone flawlessly. We are not back in time with wooden servers. 15 years have passed. In 2019 your concern doesn't find a reason to exist anymore tech wise.

About the stress test. Let's actually be realistic here. The reason the servers were pushed to the limits and beyond, was because it was a stress test. That's what it's for. That said, the reason the server was struggling (aside from them overloading it on purpose) is BECAUSE they try to fit in multiple server's worth of population into one realm, at the same time. That's why they need to have the stress tests, to make sure that if they went with the layering approach, it would go pretty smooth as they let in a massive amount of people from Day 1.

If a realm had only the OG vanilla design of about 2.5-3k players per realm, they'd be more than fine tech wise, and probably wouldn't even need those stress tests because 1 server can easily handle that load alone already.

So no, this is not a tech issue at all. It's a server population management issue. And right now, they're looking to alter the whole game's experience to MAYBE have ~3k players on 1 realm by the end of P2, or if you have high faith in them and their prediction, couple weeks in.

If their prediction is wrong, we end up right where we started, except the damage is already heavy and done, and you'll end up giving people the unavoidable server management unpleasantries that you tried to avoid in the first place, by handholding everyone into a "stable" server.
Fact is, people are people, and no matter your server, if a lot of them decide to move off for whatever reason, you're gonna have a problem.
One i experienced first hand when my raiding guild ended up on a dead server, and i had to manage it through that mess and off to another realm. But it was not as bad as people try to make the issue out to be, and it's so completely blown out of proportion you end up willing to sacrifice the autheniticity of the very long awaited game so many devoted fans had been asking for.

It's not worth it at all, it's not staying true to Vanillas GAME DESIGN (i'm NOT asking for a timemachine here), and people will be rightfully fucking pissed when they log in expecting the Vanilla game in Classic, and they see the consequences of the new feature unfold from Day 1, on top of having big queues, only to find out they're gonna have to deal with it for a while..weeks, or months. And those queues will be back again, in full on force, if the realms haven't died down enough by the start of P2. Yikes.

I don't believe it is all on one server. For example there could be multiple "servers" all called bonechewer, which is where layering would sort players into. Then as population declines they would spool down the servers and reduce it further (preferably to one). Also having 10k people on a server is also not how vanilla was and will have far greater impacts than layering could ever have.

[Alkizon]

Nevertheless, rational organization of alternative won't require either first or second. I don't see need to choose from two evils. Queues aren't unacceptable measure when they have only one attempt to do everything correctly.

[Miena]

I don't believe it is all on one server. For example there could be multiple "servers" all called bonechewer, which is where layering would sort players into. Then as population declines they would spool down the servers and reduce it further (preferably to one). Also having 10k people on a server is also not how vanilla was and will have far greater impacts than layering could ever have.

I worded it a bit badly. Yeah, all the "bonechewer" layers would be sharing the same server overall.
To eventually merge all the bonechewers into 1 realm is the goal, but if that doesn't for whatever reason happen (as predictions are likely to be off given the demand, and Blizzard underestimating these things before, not having a very good way to estimate actual showup even with name reserving) and we end up having more than one, or multiple layers by the start of P2 months later, there'd be a big queue waiting for those on that realm. That even after such a long time since the game's been released. I'm going to take them by their word that they will merge it anyways, and not split up the server, and react with nothing other than queues when this happens.

Also i agree, there absolutely shouldn't be a "megaserver" type of thing, because as you pointed out, that's not something that ever was in vanilla, and therefore shouldn't exist in classic.

Just like layering.

Don't get me wrong, i'm aware someone's going to get the short end of the stick regardless of which solution is picked for the server management issues Blizzard so strongly wants to adress. But we have a picture here with Classic, where the lines are already drawn, and Blizzards job in order to recreate the same picture is to draw along those lines. Instead, they're jerking their hand, drawing outside of them in one spot, and then expect to get the same overall picture at the end. It's not going to happen. It just became something different.
And that's not what they set out to do for Classic, unless they suddenly decided to throw overboard their own laid out expectations and design values for it:

https://imgur.com/a/ChhciYu

The game will play very differently to what it's supposed to replicate, when people from Day 1 will attempt to use this new (not yet properly announced) feature of Classic to their advantage, as they always do. People will try to hop layers, hoping to get an invite over to one (or get one upon logging out and in) where there is much less mob competition since it's low/er pop than their original layer. Players are going to announce in chat "inv!!" left and right, because the demand during the first days especially will be massive.
People in STV are going to see the shared chat saying "omg horde here at x, come kill fast!!", only to have a good chance of going there, finding there's nothing in the first place. Or they even end up finding them, about to kick their ass, only to see them phase out as they get invited by their friend from another layer. There's many more examples i can give, and the way it will impact how people will treat eachother and the game with this new system. It has no place in Classic.
We've seen what happens several times before, when Blizzard tries to make people happy by making sure they always have someone to play, at all times. The community of dead servers was sad, and Blizzard gave in. It started with LFD, then LFR, then sharding/CRZ, and now we get layering. All here to make players "happy", by forcing through ingame systems like these to try establish a "secure" population of a server, except this time, it will be in for weeks or months, and is going to define the early game experience for everyone who returns to WoW.

The earlier versions of layering have already successfully severely wounded the social aspect of WoW, starting sneakily with LFD, until we ended up with sharding/CRZ and now layering, which essentially are big shards spanned across continents. This introduces a lot of shifts in the way the game will work, because everything in it is delicately intertwined.
Cut off one head of the hydra, and several new ones will emerge. Blizzard's trying to cut off the hydra head "server merges/low pop realms", and spawns in multiple new hydra heads that will show themselves ingame from Day 1, and again, give the first impression to players of what Classic WoW is about, both new players, and returning ones who waited for years.

How that will go, i'm going to leave up to you. I've already got my predictions, and i sincerely hope none of them will come true. But given everything we currently get to know, it's not looking good, because it's not looking like vanilla WoW, which Classic is supposed to recreate in it's design.

[HuxNeva]

Layering. It accidentally helps with resources being too scarce, but it also solves audience volatility, which otherwise you would have to try (and fail) to mitigate through endless server mergers and semi-voluntary (free) transfers.

[Tekkommo]

We'll still need dynamic respawns with layering... and we'll have them.

[Jibjub]

As long as Blizzard stays true to their word, layering is by far better. I don't think it will take long to separate the wheat from the chaff (so to speak) and phase layering out. Servers will be SLAMMED to start. My biggest fear as a player is picking the "wrong" server ... one that dies or gets extremely lopsided very quickly (because a LOT of players are going to try it and quit). Dynamic spawn rates only addresses one part of the problem, it doesn't address the other (more long-term) issue... Layering is the way to go.

[Hekazi]

Personally prefer the idea of dynamic respawns, having played on a PS with these. Zero chance of people popping in and out of your layer. The ratio of resources to players remains the same.

people don't just randomly pop in and out of your layer, the layer in which you will play is determined the moment you log into the server.. unless you invite someone over, the server won't passively be throwing players here and there.

[HuxNeva]

I worded it a bit badly. Yeah, all the "bonechewer" layers would be sharing the same server overall.
To eventually merge all the bonechewers into 1 realm is the goal, but if that doesn't for whatever reason happen (as predictions are likely to be off given the demand, and Blizzard underestimating these things before, not having a very good way to estimate actual showup even with name reserving) and we end up having more than one, or multiple layers by the start of P2 months later, there'd be a big queue waiting for those on that realm. That even after such a long time since the game's been released. I'm going to take them by their word that they will merge it anyways, and not split up the server, and react with nothing other than queues when this happens.

Also i agree, there absolutely shouldn't be a "megaserver" type of thing, because as you pointed out, that's not something that ever was in vanilla, and therefore shouldn't exist in classic.

Just like layering.

Don't get me wrong, i'm aware someone's going to get the short end of the stick regardless of which solution is picked for the server management issues Blizzard so strongly wants to adress. But we have a picture here with Classic, where the lines are already drawn, and Blizzards job in order to recreate the same picture is to draw along those lines. Instead, they're jerking their hand, drawing outside of them in one spot, and then expect to get the same overall picture at the end. It's not going to happen. It just became something different.
And that's not what they set out to do for Classic, unless they suddenly decided to throw overboard their own laid out expectations and design values for it:

https://imgur.com/a/ChhciYu

The game will play very differently to what it's supposed to replicate, when people from Day 1 will attempt to use this new (not yet properly announced) feature of Classic to their advantage, as they always do. People will try to hop layers, hoping to get an invite over to one (or get one upon logging out and in) where there is much less mob competition since it's low/er pop than their original layer. Players are going to announce in chat "inv!!" left and right, because the demand during the first days especially will be massive.
People in STV are going to see the shared chat saying "omg horde here at x, come kill fast!!", only to have a good chance of going there, finding there's nothing in the first place. Or they even end up finding them, about to kick their ass, only to see them phase out as they get invited by their friend from another layer. There's many more examples i can give, and the way it will impact how people will treat eachother and the game with this new system. It has no place in Classic.
We've seen what happens several times before, when Blizzard tries to make people happy by making sure they always have someone to play, at all times. The community of dead servers was sad, and Blizzard gave in. It started with LFD, then LFR, then sharding/CRZ, and now we get layering. All here to make players "happy", by forcing through ingame systems like these to try establish a "secure" population of a server, except this time, it will be in for weeks or months, and is going to define the early game experience for everyone who returns to WoW.

The earlier versions of layering have already successfully severely wounded the social aspect of WoW, starting sneakily with LFD, until we ended up with sharding/CRZ and now layering, which essentially are big shards spanned across continents. This introduces a lot of shifts in the way the game will work, because everything in it is delicately intertwined.
Cut off one head of the hydra, and several new ones will emerge. Blizzard's trying to cut off the hydra head "server merges/low pop realms", and spawns in multiple new hydra heads that will show themselves ingame from Day 1, and again, give the first impression to players of what Classic WoW is about, both new players, and returning ones who waited for years.

How that will go, i'm going to leave up to you. I've already got my predictions, and i sincerely hope none of them will come true. But given everything we currently get to know, it's not looking good, because it's not looking like vanilla WoW, which Classic is supposed to recreate in it's design.

Volatile populations were not a part of Vanilla either. It was growing all the time with Blizzard frantically adding servers to meet demand. You can't just ignore how the world has changed, use old tech, and expect the same results.
You can stick your head in the sand, but others have been thinking on how do deal with huge swings in interest in the Classic game. Pretty sure many people have been thinking through various potential solutions, and layering is the one that they have gone with.

[Echocho]

Definitely layering. Larger servers and dynamic respawns affect the gameplay experience, layering does not. Since we're going for authenticity layering is the lesser of two evils. Authentic server caps and authentic respawn rates are extremely important.

[Miena]

Volatile populations were not a part of Vanilla either. It was growing all the time with Blizzard frantically adding servers to meet demand. You can't just ignore how the world has changed, use old tech, and expect the same results.
You can stick your head in the sand, but others have been thinking on how do deal with huge swings in interest in the Classic game. Pretty sure many people have been thinking through various potential solutions, and layering is the one that they have gone with.

There are certain things that are completely unavoidable due to times having changed, such as initial massive login hype by a ton of people. To ask to change that is completely unreasonable and has no place in arguing for Classic to resemble Vanilla, as the game.
The fact is, Vanilla has a specific game design to it, one which must be kept in line with all the way if they want to recreate it in Classic. Layering falls under a violation of that game design very clearly. It is a new feature, and introduces a whole new set of problems with it, none of which have any place in Classic to begin with, as they weren't present in Vanilla at all, due to the feature not existing.

But please, don't take it from me. Clearly you think i have my "head in the sand". Hear it from Blizzard themselves when they announced the Classic Project at Blizzcon, and explained very clearly what their guidelines are and the philosophy they aim to recreate (the same stuff i'm literally advocating for):

https://youtu.be/hhKkP8LryYM?t=1805

Now, why not hear it from J. Allen Brack himself about using modern solutions for Classic WoWs problems, just to be sure:

“One of the tenets of Classic WoW is none of the cross-server realms and different [server] sharding options that we have available to us today. There’s a lot of desire on part of the community that this is something that they don’t want.” - J. Allen Brack

They literally agree with not using any type of sharding tech, which layering is a part of.

All the “but i need layering because x” falls flat in the face of what he’s laying out here. Ion even predicted they’d eventually fall off their original goals for Classic, and therefore stated that they’d need to have these set in stone values to guide them for whenever they are about to think in the modern WoW type of way again.

And here we are. It’s time that they listen to themselves again, because they had it right from the get go, and now overcomplicate things into creating a different game altogether.
They literally have 1 thing to get right, which is to make Vanilla WoW as Classic. And they know what it is and what to do, as they have at Blizzcon. Therefore i’ll be glad to remind them until the moment they actually end up putting in layering in the game, because they have to be held to their own standards.

Projection is a funny thing. Turns out your head is in the sand about this issue, and you can't see that Classic is supposed to be an authentic recreation of Vanilla as a game. And that's why you're willing to put in something like layering, to suit your own personal preferences aka convenience. That's not what Classic is for, at all. Either you want Vanilla as in Classic, or you don't.

[Ealyssa]

Still not seeing anyone talking about how Layering doesn't accomplish what Sharding was designed for in Classic.

Classic public crying about things they don't have a clue ? Never heard of

[HuxNeva]

There are certain things that are completely unavoidable due to times having changed, such as initial massive login hype by a ton of people. To ask to change that is completely unreasonable and has no place in arguing for Classic to resemble Vanilla, as the game.
The fact is, Vanilla has a specific game design to it, one which must be kept in line with all the way if they want to recreate it in Classic. Layering falls under a violation of that game design very clearly. It is a new feature, and introduces a whole new set of problems with it, none of which have any place in Classic to begin with, as they weren't present in Vanilla at all, due to the feature not existing.

But please, don't take it from me. Clearly you think i have my "head in the sand". Hear it from Blizzard themselves when they announced the Classic Project at Blizzcon, and explained very clearly what their guidelines are and the philosophy they aim to recreate (the same stuff i'm literally advocating for):

https://youtu.be/hhKkP8LryYM?t=1805

Now, why not hear it from J. Allen Brack himself about using modern solutions for Classic WoWs problems, just to be sure:

“One of the tenets of Classic WoW is none of the cross-server realms and different [server] sharding options that we have available to us today. There’s a lot of desire on part of the community that this is something that they don’t want.” - J. Allen Brack

They literally agree with not using any type of sharding tech, which layering is a part of.

All the “but i need layering because x” falls flat in the face of what he’s laying out here. Ion even predicted they’d eventually fall off their original goals for Classic, and therefore stated that they’d need to have these set in stone values to guide them for whenever they are about to think in the modern WoW type of way again.

And here we are. It’s time that they listen to themselves again, because they had it right from the get go, and now overcomplicate things into creating a different game altogether.
They literally have 1 thing to get right, which is to make Vanilla WoW as Classic. And they know what it is and what to do, as they have at Blizzcon. Therefore i’ll be glad to remind them until the moment they actually end up putting in layering in the game, because they have to be held to their own standards.

Projection is a funny thing. Turns out your head is in the sand about this issue, and you can't see that Classic is supposed to be an authentic recreation of Vanilla as a game. And that's why you're willing to put in something like layering, to suit your own personal preferences aka convenience. That's not what Classic is for, at all. Either you want Vanilla as in Classic, or you don't.

You are taking some liberties here with interpretation, and still avoiding the issue completely.

First of all, you are not 'advocating' for anything. You offer no solution. You are 'rallying against', but without offering a reasonable alternative.
Second, Ion is talking about the 'Classic Experience'.
To achieve a close experience, in light of an enormously different world, you have to adapt the system to come even close to the same experience. It's like saying 'people did not need space suits on earth, so to recreate the authentic earth living experience we will not give them spacesuits on the moon'.

People in the early days did experience some inconveniences from under-provisioning and instability. This wasn't a design choice, but a consequence of inexperience and unexpected success. While there was churn in the player-base, there was always net positive strong growth. WoW didn't have to face a shrinking playerbase until much, much later. The effects of those, many abandoned empty realms, was definitely not part of the 'Vanilla experience'. even the influx of new players was much more regulated and predictable as it depended on the sale of physical disks previously having been manufactured and shipped to stores.

So what is the "authentic integrity of social dynamics experience" the team is trying to recreate?
That would be:

• relatively small population realms from a player's point of view (5-20K, not 200-2.000K)
• nearly always near capacity filled and with little churn from a player's point of view

So given an expected background of a highly volatile high frequency boom-bust-reboom-rebust-..., how are you going to recreate that "authentic experience"? They came up with layering, have overlayed realms in which separation of friended players is mitigated through a persistent explicitly initiated then implicit affinity based grouping mechanic, and that in itself already delineates future merger boundaries through the troughs in the population cycle.

Will layering be perfect and unexploited? Undoubtedly not. Will it approximate the "authentic integrity of social dynamics experience"? That remain to be seen but at least it tries to do so, more than the 'hands off' approach.

So what is your secret solution that Blizzard failed to discover?

P.S. All this i just about the integrity of the population dynamics experience. The 'social interaction' aspect is a whole different kettle of fish. Anyone believing the social player interactions will be even close to 2004 has already undergone the memory deleting brain surgery and lobotomy that would be required for that.

[Maudib]

Dynamic respawns for me.

It sucks when there are not enough spawns for the players killing mobs.

It's realistic to have mobs take time to come back into an area when a mass of people kill them off. As soon as you use the words "It sucks to..." and expect a feature to fix it... then you are talking about convenience.

To replicate experience... layers provides a server-like experience with player to mob ratios... but allows all the players to log in.

THAT is win win.

[Bookofblade]

I am seeing a common thing brought up that I feel is being a bit overblown by people. They specifically stated that you would be tied to a layer. So if you were placed into layer 2 when you made your char you would log into layer 2 along with everyone else placed into layer 2 every time you log in. So no amount of logging in and out would cause you to be in a different layer allowing you to look for more herbs or whatever. The only way to change layers is to be invited into a party by someone from another layer. You would need to make arrangements with someone from that layer likely through means outside of the game as you would never have bumped into that person in game. So if you have enough friends already on your friends list all rolling on the same server and happen to all be placed on different layers then you could possibly work out some kinda layer hopping scheme however that assumes the system doesn't try to prioritize placing people who are friended together into the same layers if possible.

[Daedius]

The absolute one thing I hate about MMORPGs is competition for mob spawn. That, and long respawn times.

[klaps_05]

Layering as it addresses the actual issue, players in 1 spot.