Layering has no place in WoW or any MMORPG

[MoanaLisa]

Server load distribution is a thing. Attempting to recall the days of hours-long queues and standing around waiting endlessly for respawns as some sort of fond MMO cultural memory strikes me as unserious if not a little nuts.

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Maybe MMO devs shouldn't design their game so that a million people are stacked on top of a single questgiver. Everyone is the savior of Azeroth, going around doing the exact same questline everyone else is doing. How immersive.

It's a great argument for making the game even more solo player oriented than it already is.

[SaucyThighs]

I agree. In some cases, though, layering actually makes the game feel more like an MMO (at least on a superficial level) because you can get more people into an area that may be lacking them.

But it's a messy way to go about it because it undermines the the point of getting people together in an MMO, which is to have a shared experience in a world. Now you have a bunch of people who look like they're together on the face of it but really they're not...

I think in its idealized form, it would mean everyone can play with everyone seamlessly, making the game truly 1 community in 1 world, but if we can't achieve that with one server we can't achieve it any more with layering because that means everyone is going to be popping in and out of everywhere -- effectively making a game that plays like one without layering and without the server community identity also.

It's another example of them trying to fix and manage a social dynamic with a technical system... it doesn't treat the root cause at all it's just a facade. If your friend doesn't want to play with you enough to join your server you can't outengineer that. And I don't think the issue of server populations is so serious or complex that it needs a core immersion-breaking level feature to manage it.

[Neuroticaine]

Layering is a basic staple feature of MMORPGs that has been around long before World of Warcraft ever tried to implement it.

Do you ever get tired of coming here to rage about things that have made the experience quantitatively and demonstrably better for every player of the game?

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Maybe MMO devs shouldn't design their game so that a million people are stacked on top of a single questgiver. Everyone is the savior of Azeroth, going around doing the exact same questline everyone else is doing. How immersive.

If you have that many players playing a single game on a single server, you're going to have too much competition for getting ANYTHING accomplished in the game.

[jeezusisacasual]

Complaining about layering is like complaining about instances unless you want MMO's to take even more time then they already do which is kinda stupid. Its not a interactive world and never was its been a theme park since its inception.

[Caerrona]

Maybe MMO devs shouldn't design their game so that a million people are stacked on top of a single questgiver. Everyone is the savior of Azeroth, going around doing the exact same questline everyone else is doing. How immersive.

So what? You want those million players to have a million unique quests in a million unique locations?

Jesus christ this website has gone downhill. Used to be 9/10 posts and comments were utter trash, now it's 99/100.

[Dristereau]

I like it personally, it allows you to keep playing on larger servers when areas are busier than they need to be. They've limited it so it only goes so far as well. I've been levelling the last few days and there's been times when I've been waiting for mobs to respawn so I don't think it isolates you completely.

I don't really think having 2006 sized servers would help either with one layer. All it would do is help them die out faster because of the amount of people who quit or move servers to play with friends along with how few people there could be levelling. They seem to have gone with a far more stable approach for WotLK with consolidating most of the dead/dying TBC servers, allowing free migrations to smaller ones and adding a limited number of realms - keeps the game functioning better and using layers to help with player experiences.

[Irian]

Honestly I agree. Layering and phasing was one of the most shit things they introduced to the game, I don't care if it benefits their half-assed story or whatever I just want to feel like I'm a part of the same world with the other players of the game. That's fundamental to an MMORPG.

If things get crowded, oh well, people figured out creative workarounds in the past and they will again. Especially with the game being more modernized with faster respawns and shared tagging.

[Otimus]

TBH, I think having almost all meaningful content in an MMORPG be entirely instanced content is a much bigger flaw, and with WoW, it has been with it since it was new. Hell, the actual world is basically a large lobby to varying degrees post-vanilla. Dead, pointless unchanging world with zero player agency. Worse there is it's a problem no one cares about, seemingly, but me. Without that large, meaningful world, almost every MMORPG, including WoW, is just a poor playing action-RPG with extra people around with PVP modes cribbed from far better playing games, all which don't cost a monthly fee.
TBH, it seems like a certain loud sect just want a very elaborate raiding simulator and not much else, and that's depressingly the only people Blizzard seem to genuinely listen to half the time.

[WowIsDead64]

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.

Unfortunately Wow is MMO...that isn't designed as MMO. So, game just can't handle many players doing the same thing at the same time. It includes both server lags and exceeding competition. We have to deal with it.

Respawn for example. When I played Vanilla's locations, respawn time was around 20 minutes. I could go drink coffee, eat something, get back to game - and mobs wouldn't respawn. That's why killing mobs wasn't problem back them - they wouldn't all of a sudden respawn right behind you and overwhelm you. In current game respawn time is lesser than minute. Killing mobs is pointless. Aggro is pointless. Combat is pointless. Ground traveling is pointless.

[mst3kfan]

Yeah I bet the experience would be much better with 60k people on the same realm without any layering. Sure bro.

I mean if this R-tard wants to go play I am Legend on his own server we can leave one for him alone while the rest of us play together. Blizzard needs to pull their thumb out of their ass, and connect the servers like they should have been from the beginning.

[Cosmic Janitor]

Meanwhile, I wish they would hyper-layer quest npcs, so all other players disappear when you need to turn in a quest. Demounting isn't enough sometimes.

For story purposes it would definitely be better to phase out other players, well depending on the story at hand. Stuff like the heart chamber were such massive immersion breakers with all the rabble standing around in it, it completely ruined the feel of what they were trying to do there in BfA when they already phased it for the intro and even magni outside.

[Belloc]

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

Not being able to level due to overpopulation and oppressive PVP ruined the game for me back in Vanilla. Explain how that's fun?

Cross-realm added massive amounts of players to the pool of players and allowed friends on other servers to play with each other. Explain how that's a bad thing.

[Cosmic Janitor]

Maybe MMO devs shouldn't design their game so that a million people are stacked on top of a single questgiver. Everyone is the savior of Azeroth, going around doing the exact same questline everyone else is doing. How immersive.

A minimum amount of suspesnsion of disbelief is always required. It starts with other players existing in the world and respawning (you and the mobs). You always need some suspension of disbelief, even if all the quest lines were boring and mundane, because that is what you are asking for. Every adventure would sooner or later lead to getting some kind of fame that would logically alleviate us above our status of random nobodies. The only way out of that would be to keep us as random nobodies and only give a select few players recognition, which makes for a great MMO (maybe), but destroys the RPG and fun part of the experience entirely for everyone that is stuck at peasant adventurer still picking peace bloom or continually dying in some trench to quillbors. It simply does not work for a good game (let alone story) that runs for 2 decades and shifts theme every 2 years. If you compare it to a DnD campain then it would be the equivalent of 10 campaigns straight until today and never resetting your characters. It just doesn't work, so it wouldn't be immersive either.

Btw, I'm all for reducing the stakes in WoW and going away from dealing with godly entities on cosmic scales to normal RPG enemies, but that doesn't mean you can just ignore the last 20 years nor that you should attempt to. You can still craft good stories that have you being the hero while only dealing with enmies that could destroy a town or something like that, it doesn't need to be world sundering, intergalactic and interdimensional wild goose chases across all of creation.

[WowIsDead64]

Cross-realm added massive amounts of players to the pool of players and allowed friends on other servers to play with each other. Explain how that's a bad thing.

Major problem - because it's forced. It would be ok, if it would work for explicit groups only, so players would be able to play with friends. But when Blizzard merge God knows how many servers to save physical server resources, that cause overcrowding, exceeding competition and server lags - that's just terrible.

[Biomega]

Maybe MMO devs shouldn't design their game so that a million people are stacked on top of a single questgiver. Everyone is the savior of Azeroth, going around doing the exact same questline everyone else is doing. How immersive.

Immersion is a red herring. People SAY and maybe even THINK they want it, but they don't want it at the expense of mechanics.

What people ACTUALLY want is to have a smooth, uncomplicated gameplay experience. They want to log in, do shit alone, hang out with some people, do some shit with them, log off again. They don't want any fuss interfering with that kind of experience, because no one wants to spend 20 minutes travelling on foot through a dark forest where nothing happens even if that would "immersive". Or whatever.

Immersion is an illusion that exists only in the shadow of mechanical satisfaction. People are fine with immersion that happens ON TOP OF all the other stuff that makes for a convenient, uninterrupted gameplay experience; they're (usually) not fine with sacrificing that experience in the name of immersion. Covenants if anything proved that to excess.

And to begin with, WoW was never a particularly immersive game. It was designed specifically to be the "casual MMO". It took out all the "hard" RPG bullshit in favor of a streamlined, smoothed-out experience from day 1. And that proved to work for a lot more people than the more immersion-oriented but less accessible alternative.

Layers are part of that. Nobody wants a TRULY massive multiplayer RPG, because it would have immense mechanical problems - it would either require a world so enormous it could actually accommodate the player numbers (and with millions, that would mean way way way past TES map sizes even) or it would feature a constant rush-hour-like assault on key areas where you could barely see the ground for the players. Layers are the middle ground that solves all those problems, by artificially controlling populations to be (relatively) closely matched to area capacities - allowing for moderately-sized worlds that feel neither too empty nor overcrowded. It's almost impossible to realistically achieve this without layering.

The downsides are highly specific and usually affect a very narrow part of the population. While the upsides benefit significant portions of that demographic. It's a good, practical solution to a fundamental problem. It's not going to go away anytime soon, and that's probably a good thing.

[Echo of Soul]

Somehow it is funny but I remember servers runnning just fine back in the day without layering. Maybe its just me but obviously they have not implemented servers the same way as they used to. The only time there was lag was when a whole bunch of folks were in Dalaran or Iron Forge and it wasn't that bad on my medium-high pop server. Must be some kind of 'mega realm' thing or rather these new classic realms are set up differently and have a higher total population capacity because they are built with layering in mind unlike the actual vanilla servers.

Yes the servers aren't set up the same, they're much MUCH larger. The reason that the servers were running fine back then was because only 2500 players could be on them at any given time.

Now I'd happily go back to that but I'm fine with 13 hour long queues at launch and servers dying out completely after a year, most people aren't.

[Nzx]

in my opinion

I genuinely do wonder at what point society flipped from "the world doesn't revolve around you" to "every time you have a thought while you're taking a shit, post it on the internet as if anyone else actually cares". What the fuck do you think is going to happen? You're going to start a massive viral movement to get layering removed and at the end of it Blizzard are going to cave and everyone who tries to level a new character and runs into 150 other people trying to kill the same mobs will say "Thank god for Gimlix, I'm so glad he thought about removing layering one day while taking a shit and now I have to take 2 hours to complete a quest that should take 10 minutes, I sure am Immersed™"?

[Miseration]

the throwing jabs at one another because we disagree is slightly comical but not really. what is that? agree to disagree? secondly I suppose its ok layering that is. I am remembering though.. Nazjatar and the layering nightmare that was when the PVP even was going

[Usernameforforums]

What are megaservers when u can only see 5% of ur server?

Trade opportunity.

[Alkizon]

The solution is realms with less people with them so layering isn't required for stability. I'm personally fine with that, I advocated for authentic 2500 realm caps from the moment classic was announced until it launched but the community overall was pretty clear that they wanted megaservers and #changes so here we are.

Yeah, that was time when I lost hope for any playable WoW version further.