Layering has no place in WoW or any MMORPG

[Mardux]

I didn't log on expecting "making an MMO's core mechanics unplayable is good" to be a take, but here we are.

I did log on expecting hyperbole and shit takes. Thank you for disappointing.

[JDL49]

I don't want to have to stand in line and wait for mobs to respawn.

I don't want to have to fight off 10 other people camping ore or herb nodes so I can just get what I need for myself.

I don't want to go to questing areas and see nothing but corpses as far as the eye can see.

I don't want to be unable to see quest givers or vendors under the pile of other players.

Wut he said.

[Kumorii]

This is just "Old days were better" argument and the only reason why it's better it's because it's from the old days...

It's nonsensical.

[Temp name]

Layering in my opinion does NOT belong inside a MMORPG. It's already in the name: Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game.
Yesterday there were 12 layers on classic server, 12.

How is this acceptable?

Oh, it's quite simple, it's either that or have a twelfth the people playing.
Would you like queue times to be 12 times as long? Because that's literally what you're saying you want. They're not layering just because they want to, they're doing it because they want more people to play the game, and layers allow them to spread the load over more physical servers.

"Just put them on the same server"
it would fucking crash. The technology does not exist for a single server to have 100k people on it, that's literally why they made sharding and layering

[Lochton]

I think you're conflating layering/sharding with CRZ. Layering/sharding doesn't increase the number of players in a zone.

Sharding/layering does change the number of people you meet in a zone, CRZ just merges zones with other servers. filling the deck with more layers till they remove themselves.

[Relapses]

This is just "Old days were better" argument and the only reason why it's better it's because it's from the old days...

It's nonsensical.

Rose-tinted goggles on so tight they're cutting off oxygen supply to the brain. Methinks the people in favor of this are the same who insist their computer's performance tripled after they downloaded more RAM.

[Mic_128]

Welcome to a MMORPG. this is also stuff that made WoW. These kinda events will stay for you for life.

What "event"? It'll stay with me just as much as waiting in line at the post office.

[Velerios]

Layering and cross realm ruined the game. Change my mind.

Easily done; bad decisions ruins the game. The big issue is to keep the layers populated, and here blizzard does it too conservatively, but beside of this, what ruined the game are so much things like not enough content, dumbing down classes, not enough focus on single player aspect and so on. There are so many things that make people flee, but CRZ or layers aren't it. Heck, 90% of players don't even know that layering exists.

[Gimlix]

Easily done; bad decisions ruins the game. The big issue is to keep the layers populated, and here blizzard does it too conservatively, but beside of this, what ruined the game are so much things like not enough content, dumbing down classes, not enough focus on single player aspect and so on. There are so many things that make people flee, but CRZ or layers aren't it. Heck, 90% of players don't even know that layering exists.

What is the point of this? We are talking about layering. And you are right, most people don't know that they are being layered, they just think WoW is dead and quit.
Layering kills high pop realms and low pop realms barely have proper working CRZ so they just become more dead.

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What "event"? It'll stay with me just as much as waiting in line at the post office.

I still remember 200 man Oondasta to this day, which was like 11 years ago? Best event i ever had. Seeing so many other players nuking down 1 boss.
No way u get 200 players at 1 spot anymore because of layering. The real MMORPG experience we getting after all

[Hambo94]

Layering in my opinion does NOT belong inside a MMORPG. It's already in the name: Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game.
Yesterday there were 12 layers on classic server, 12.

How is this acceptable? I am glad everyone can level straight forward now with no issues of other players but isn't this the whole point of a MMORPG.
I wanna see people everywhere i go and if the realm is split into 12 other realms then there is no way you even see 10% of your actual Realm population.

How are people supporting this nonsense feature in WoW? This only makes your realm appear more dead then it actually is.

And this is a real issue not only in classic but also retail.

Its not possible to load everyone into one layer without killing performance of players and the servers though.

Layers are very flawed in WoW, especially when you're in a zone with almost nobody and yet your friend who is also in this barren location devoid of other players, is on a different layer.

But layering extreme high traffic areas isnt just logical, its a literal necessity. Do you realise what would happen to your PC if you had the draw calls of 1000 players, all of their pets, toys, all their armour, spell effects etc all being loaded onto your PC. It tanks.

I understand your concerns/point, but you dont understand the game development tech side of things matey, Blizzard def dont have it set up correctly though, as I said, you shouldnt be in different layers when you're in a low population area. I assume they're just splitting the playerbase into X layers regardless of where they are in the world which is obviously flawed. Perhaps in terms of their tech they're forced to do that, but if thats the case its pretty flawed. Not sure how the WoW engine works so cant really comment on that.

[agentsi]

No you are one of the worst players a MMORPG can have. You expect to have smooth scaling from begin to end, hell i bet you even demand to see all content that is available. Even though you don't qualify for it.

You know what to do with 20 dead realms? Merge them into one instead of milking them to dead because you don't wanna show the world ur deleting dead realms. That is the only reason CRZ/Layering exist.

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Welcome to a MMORPG. this is also stuff that made WoW. These kinda events will stay for you for life.
Removing all those little stuff just gives us a stale simple minded MMORPG, that is one of WoW biggest issues, so much streamlined so anyone can play without any bothersome.

No, the person you are quoting is 100% correct about you, and your attitude. Layering exists for a very specific reason, that reason? Because the players demanded it. The game demanded it. Waiting 30 mins to kill a quest mob is unacceptable.

For those of us who have played Everquest, that game was designed for groups to sit in camps, kill mobs, and wait for things. Killing placeholders for hours on end to get one quest mob to spawn etc. But again, that game was DESIGNED, for that style of play.

WoW, is not. WoW is designed with the quest system in mind to use for leveling. You can't move on to the next chain without finishing the first step. Playing Wrath classic, on the new server, the first day it released, was an ABSOLUTE nightmare. You can't find things to kill to grind, you have to group to kill a quest mob, and lots of folks refuse to be social so they tag it, and you're stuck waiting in one spot for 10-15 mins, or longer because people want to be dickheads. Layering is required to cut some of that time away. Also, the game is designed around old architecture, which makes having 100-200 people in one area a bit of a mess. Now on the classic servers that are fresh, they had thousands of people starting up. I literally had to skip zones because they were so popular. And even then, you can't find mining nodes, or herb nodes because its overpopulated.

So no, it isn't killing the game, if anything, it is making the game playable for most folks. If you don't like it, don't play. But your opinion is in an extremely small minority, and objectively wrong. QoL is there for a reason, stop crying about it and quit. Then maybe we wouldn't have to see your stupid ass posts anymore.

[jeezusisacasual]

No, the person you are quoting is 100% correct about you, and your attitude. Layering exists for a very specific reason, that reason? Because the players demanded it. The game demanded it. Waiting 30 mins to kill a quest mob is unacceptable.

For those of us who have played Everquest, that game was designed for groups to sit in camps, kill mobs, and wait for things. Killing placeholders for hours on end to get one quest mob to spawn etc. But again, that game was DESIGNED, for that style of play.

WoW, is not. WoW is designed with the quest system in mind to use for leveling. You can't move on to the next chain without finishing the first step. Playing Wrath classic, on the new server, the first day it released, was an ABSOLUTE nightmare. You can't find things to kill to grind, you have to group to kill a quest mob, and lots of folks refuse to be social so they tag it, and you're stuck waiting in one spot for 10-15 mins, or longer because people want to be dickheads. Layering is required to cut some of that time away. Also, the game is designed around old architecture, which makes having 100-200 people in one area a bit of a mess. Now on the classic servers that are fresh, they had thousands of people starting up. I literally had to skip zones because they were so popular. And even then, you can't find mining nodes, or herb nodes because its overpopulated.

So no, it isn't killing the game, if anything, it is making the game playable for most folks. If you don't like it, don't play. But your opinion is in an extremely small minority, and objectively wrong. QoL is there for a reason, stop crying about it and quit. Then maybe we wouldn't have to see your stupid ass posts anymore.

God i hated the days of farming Lower Guk for a sash only to see the same place holder respawn for 3 hours. Now that i think back on it thank fuck that kind of MMO died. Altho the moments of MBG KEI at PoK Bank was a cool moment out of thousands of terrible moments.

[Ragedaug]

Layering in my opinion does NOT belong inside a MMORPG. It's already in the name: Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game.
Yesterday there were 12 layers on classic server, 12.

How is this acceptable? I am glad everyone can level straight forward now with no issues of other players but isn't this the whole point of a MMORPG.
I wanna see people everywhere i go and if the realm is split into 12 other realms then there is no way you even see 10% of your actual Realm population.

How are people supporting this nonsense feature in WoW? This only makes your realm appear more dead then it actually is.

And this is a real issue not only in classic but also retail.

Layering is pretty awesome. Of course going by your hyperbole, it sounds like you are saying there were 12 players online and WoW stuffed them all into their own unique layers. So yeah, that would be dumb, and I'm not sure why you would present your argument like that unless you just figured your fellow MMO-C posters & readers were also dumb.

Layering is great when there's 6,000 people on your server in Shattrath, and you can segment them into a dozen 500 player segments.

Layering is the technology that casts revive on dead realms. Where the "Massive Multiplayer" in logging on to a dead realm? So instead of logging onto your dead realm, you join a full realm, but wait, you can't because Blizzard is only allowing the first 10,000. the rest can just bugger off, back to your dead realms. So instead of that, make every server massive. For all I care, make 1 PVE realm, 1 PVP realm, 1 RPVE and 1 RPVP. Then layer the crap out of it. That way players aren't segregated. Everyone is playing together in one "Massive" community. All the guilds are there. Pick the one you want and request an invite. All your friends are now on the same realm.

We know from past experience that lots of little isolated servers doesn't work. Within a couple XPacs, lots of folks move on, and the realm is dead. MegaRealms & layering fixes that.

[RoKPaNda]

Layering makes my mega server playable, so yeah I like it.

[Echo of Soul]

No, the person you are quoting is 100% correct about you, and your attitude. Layering exists for a very specific reason, that reason? Because the players demanded it. The game demanded it. Waiting 30 mins to kill a quest mob is unacceptable.

Exactly. A handful of us advocated for accurate server caps of 2500 players but the overwhelming majority wanted #changes and megaservers so instead of creating an authentic 2005 experience Blizzard butchered it right out of the gate

[Relapses]

Exactly. A handful of us advocated for accurate server caps of 2500 players but the overwhelming majority wanted #changes and megaservers so instead of creating an authentic 2005 experience Blizzard butchered it right out of the gate

Because Classic would have felt so much more authentic if 95% of the servers were dead.

Jesus man.

[Echo of Soul]

Because Classic would have felt so much more authentic if 95% of the servers were dead.

Jesus man.

Why would they be dead? 2500 concurrent characters felt pretty God damn alive back in 2005, why would it feel less alive today with 2500 concurrent characters?

[InfiniteCharger]

I don't think a lot of players in WOW today want to play an MMO and goodness, WOW is one of the most accessible MMOs out there. Prior to WOW there were MMOs where resources and mobs took a lot longer to respawn and getting killed meant you could lose gear and gold to other players, if not having to restart all over again. The whole point is to treat the game world as the 'real world' to a degree with real day night cycles, weather, resource regeneration timers, etc. That is the point. If you want a single player RPG then go play that if you don't want to deal with other people or resources and mobs having to respawn, etc.

At the end of the day the problem with servers in WOW and the modern incarnation of these classic servers is 'balance'. You don't want too many players per server and you don't want too few either. 2500 server cap with modern hardware would run far better than the servers did 17 years ago because of modern hardware improvements. Having layering and mega servers just negates that benefit because they are pushing the system to its limit and that only hurts the game in the long run. Too many players are now in game and in one place because there are more players online and that makes things totally out of whack compared to what it used to be. And that still isn't going to fix dead servers especially when you have mass exoduses due to the long queue times due to them adding so many players to each server. And I doubt that they 'needed' layering to begin with because the servers were capped as they were in vanilla and on modern hardware, those lag issues would be less frequent in the first place. I think they always assumed or preferred mega servers from the jump vs having more numbers of smaller servers to manage. And especially due to the fact that each version of classic is getting its own set of servers.

[munkeyinorbit]

Hey people blame that WoW feels dead, i wonder why when 1 server has 12 layers. Sorry but with the health of the game, splitting up your userbase is far from a logical thing to do.

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WoD Garrison was nothing compared to the MoP plane start mission.

So if we got rid of layering we would have...

The same amount of people in each zone doing the same thing except there are 11 layers amount of people in queue? Nothing would change.

It's not layers you should be angry with, it's players. People play the game different now than in the past.

[Varitok]

Man, I wish layering was the only problem the game had.