r/classicwow • u/sknilegap • 3d ago
Forever Beta Feedback Layering doesn't exist in Wow forever. This garbage is CRZ/sharding.
I keep seeing people talk about layering (devs included) as if it is the same thing we had in classic. Layering, as a concept, was the idea that an ENTIRE continent was a single layer and housed a certain number of people.
What we have in wow forever is simply sharding/CRZ (cross-realm-zones). This is a different "layer,zone" per individual leveling area. This is what came into retail wow, and is why when you switch zones you phase away. Layering was created with the sole intention of preventing the EXACT situation happening now between zones.
It is abhorrent, immersion-breaking, and needs to go. Bring true layering back.
And if they ARE using layering, then you should NEVER layer someone on zone transition; especially automatically without that new prompt.
Probably my second biggest gripe in retail past flying mounts is that the world isn't continuous. Seeing people and even mobs pop in and out on zone switches is about as immersion breaking as if every zone just had a big portal you stepped through to get to the next zone. Hell, at least the portals would make sense.
Edit: I am seeing people here and otherwise claim I'm making up layering being "whole continents." Or maybe not being familiar with the original intention of layering.
Straight from the OG Classic Dev's mouths.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3b423uqrdo&t=221s
"We, effectively, built up new technology. We’re kinda calling it Layering and this new technology kinda allows us to span World of Warcraft Continents wholesale. So an entire Eastern Kingdoms and entire Kalimdor is sort of one single seamless continuous world that all players will be able to play in. However for launch we will be able to have, if we need to, more than one of those continuous worlds […] Once you’re kind of in one of these layers we try to keep you kind of sticking to it so for example if you start off in Elwyn Forest […] during that play session if you move on to other zones you know all the way north you will still be sharing the same continent."
103
u/ScarletDarkling 3d ago
The letters CRZ incite an unholy rage in me to this day lol
16
11
u/Low-Phase-6548 2d ago
how come? it was a nice little car. it didnt last very long but it was cool to see one in awhile
124
u/imaUPSdriver 3d ago
Watching the streams of massive PvP battles and they have to “load in” the zone to fight and when things got bad they could back up and “load out” of the battle. Kinda weak
66
u/CG20370417 3d ago
Last night I took a boat from Ratchet to BB.
Leaving ratchet it was me and 1 UD paladin.
Upon zoning into EK on the boat heading into BB...I had no less than 10 new bodies that appeared on the boat.
I was in a cave in Westfall. I invited a guy, upon him declining my invite, I was layer hopped without a warning. Ive been invited to groups, declined, and got layered as a result. Ive also left groups...and been layered.
When I fly from SW to Westfall, upon crossing the river, nearly everytime a bunch of gryphons spawn in carrying people to Sentinel Hill.
I chased a horde out of Westfall and into Duskwood, he disappeared as we hit the transition between zones.
On a pve server, fine whatever. But on pvp or rp? this shit ruins the world experience.
Im struggling to understand why individual servers are so much worse...Blizzard has shown time and time again, the ability to combine servers, to merge low pop realms.
The only complaint people have is blizzard will often act months to a half year out of step with when moves should have been made to condense realms.
Why am I being punished because I dont want to play on a mega server? I prefer a medium sized server (by classic standards), what would have been a large server in vanilla (Arthas and Illidan for example).
They can link AH across servers, if thats a concern. They can link servers as theyve done before. They can even merge servers forcing name changes to the new entrants, as theyve done before.
It may be technically impressive, the coding to make all this happen. But its an inferior end user product.
15
u/Schultzze 2d ago
yeah i really dont understand the incentive to remove realms. it was great.
11
u/Rolia1 2d ago
It's because history has shown that people just end up migrating to mega servers over time and they are just trying to get ahead of that.
Though I do agree I want there to be more realms personally as well. For me I really want that sense of realm identity back in the game and I just can't see a world where layering existing and 1 server for everyone can make that happen. Its a shame.
I just think they should adopt runescapes "worlds" system and be done with it. I think it solves all the problems that layers cause and also gives people the ability to pick home worlds to stay in if they want to.
2
u/CG20370417 2d ago
It's because history has shown that people just end up migrating to mega servers over time and they are just trying to get ahead of that.
In every other version of the game, they have successfully merged servers as numbers dwindled.
If they are wholly against letting us choose our layer, or making old style servers...
Then I'd like to see a US W PVP, US E PVP, US W PVE, US E PVE, US RP. Even just doubling the servers like that would...half the layers.
Blizzard even has the tech to link the AHs across all 5 servers.
The only "reasonable" cause for wanting us all on one layered server is cost. It must be more expensive to maintain the old servers. And obviously there must be come cost attached to server merging.
But lol, this game has between 5 million and 9 million subscribers and it seems like there are hundreds of thousands playing beta, if not a million. We (nearly) all paid $30.
Blizzard brought in maybe $165,000,000 this month.
And they bring in $65 million to $135 million monthly.
(5m x 12.99 to 9m x 15)The cost question kinda falls of deaf ears.
2
u/tinyElliss 2d ago
The biggest reason I could think of is launch of the game. People wouldnt land on same servers as their friends cuz of queues and such, like you pick one server but then it turns out its a lot more popular with longer queues so you pick another but oh no, some of your friends already playing there so now we are split.
43
u/Far_Priority_6305 3d ago
That explains it. I've been playing classic so long I forgot about CRZ.
It's super immersion breaking. I was talking to someone in /say as I was leaving stormwind and all of a sudden they dissappear.
Changing "layers" is also extremely immersion breaking when it keeps happening every 10-15 minutes.
79
u/no_terran 3d ago
The main problem being solved by sharding isn't any of our problems as players. It's the problem of minimizing the cost of Azure/AWS instances.
23
9
u/nykezztv 2d ago edited 2d ago
Blizzard has its own physical infrastructure for WoW game servers. The problem being solved is the load though, yes.
6
u/themoslucius 2d ago
Whether it's self-hosted data centers with bare metal or using cloud providers like AWS or gcp, there's still a huge cost element at play. Either way, it's the amount of CPU and memory needed which translates to computing costs which is the largest component for any infrastructure cost strategy
2
u/Impeesa_ 2d ago
Compute needs scale geometrically with the number of players in a crowded area though, because each needs to be updated and checked against everyone else, which is why large battles can lag so badly. Spinning up new shards may have some specific overhead cost, but more spread out players also require less compute.
1
u/themoslucius 2d ago edited 2d ago
You say that with high confidence, do you have a blizzard or other mmo white paper to reference? Because scaling typically more connections and calls to the backend per user translates to horizontal scaling and more infrastructure not less. How the data is managed on the caching layer is irrespective of the underlying connections layer
8
u/jelliedonut 2d ago
Each additional player increases the number of events sent to the existing players in that area. 10 players in an area with a 1hz update frequency results in 9x10=90 events per second since each player needs the state updates from all the other players. But 20 players results in 19x20=380 events i.e. quadratic scaling. Of course there are optimizations to reduce network load (interest caching, throttling, optimizing payload size, etc) but that doesn't solve the underlying scaling problem.
Some papers on the problem if you're interested:
https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~srini/papers/papers/2006-Bharambe-nsdi/2006-Bharambe-nsdi.pdf
https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/archive/6.824-2005/reports/assiotis.pdf
→ More replies (2)1
u/hawik 2d ago
Incorrect they use at least GCP that I know of. Probably aws too
1
1
u/Wilbo007 1d ago
Blizzard has their own data centers, at times in the past they HAVE used AWS for extra capacity in Overwatch, but that is no longer the case.
4
u/TotallyRadTV 2d ago
isn't any of our problems as players
This is what bugs me most about layering. They completely ruin any sense of immersion and community (two pillars of MMORPGs) just to make their own lives easier.
Give us faction-balanced realms. Some will die, but that's life.
33
u/galactic_giraff3 3d ago
Yes, thank you. This is the exact cherry on top that killed wow for me way back when. Feels janky af, like I wouldn't expect to see that crap in an indie game, I don't care about any "but teh problems" takes, all problems are secondary to coherence. If this is how you solve problems then why not just sell us raid tickets directly, why bother with the rest of the ever-fkin-phasing game. It's cheap and ruins the world.
32
u/budibro 3d ago
Isn't it all about the illusion? You're completely right. Just layer me in a moment when I don't see it. Everything else is a thousand percent more acceptable
21
u/sknilegap 3d ago
Yup, I am fine with the necessity of the system. Just keep it immersive.
Make me sticky to those crossing over around the same time window as me. So if Myself, nightelf mowhawk, and feral4lyfe all are crossing over, we all see each other on the other side of the next zone, grouped or not.
I'm sure there are many ways of accomplishing it, but the current way was designed with most players flying and not really noticing it anyway. It needs to be designed with all players crossing zones on foot in mind.
5
u/taa213468 2d ago
Solid post m8. I couldn’t put my finger on it when playing the beta, but this makes sense.
5
u/Draugor 2d ago
thats such a nice idea, stick players together that interacted for some time in a zone through whisperes, walked or killed mobs together, regardless of group or not (you could also kinda overengineer that and give each player pair a sticky-score depending on the interactions they had, decay it over time, and if i cross into a new zone place me on the layer with the players i had the combined total highest sticky score)
it doesnt really matter if one zone over is a new/different layer, if the people i interacted with 10 minutes ago who might be a bit ahead of me, are also there
i cant notice the people on the old/new layer i havent seen or interacted with, but i for sure notice the ones i spent time with
13
u/dangerdong 2d ago
I took the deeprun tram from IF to SW and exited the zone and none of the people I was riding with were in the same layer lol this is so different from vanilla and even classic rerelease
19
u/RedditClout 2d ago
I fear this is the biggest hurdle Forever is going to have to deal with moving forward. Not only in their design pipelines, but their hardware pipelines.
I can only imagine its easier to simply adopt what Retail is doing. What their engine is capable of, what their network is capable of and so on. I'm not saying the 'cant' do this, because frankly the 'should', but I feel Blizzard is going to constantly run into this internal business friction of keeping legacy code, legacy pipelines, legacy design features in their software (and possibly even 3rd party hardware) that has long sunset against modern technologies. I can totally see a world where in 3-5 years Forever is just Retail, but without expansions because they rather not keep up with the requirements of game separation.
Frankly, I rather see them go so far back we get old static servers again. No layering, no sharding, no regions - nada. Straight up old school servers. If they want the world to be a character, so were the servers. Anyone who played back then could tell you stories only told from Illidan, or Kel'Thuzad or so on. I understand that's a wish that won't happen, but man - specifically from a networking perspective - I'd give anything to feel like I'm not playing Retail with a different coat on it.
I hope they can continue to improve on this layering/sharding technology because right now its by far the worst thing about Forever.
4
u/sknilegap 2d ago
I hope they can continue to improve on this layering/sharding technology because right now its by far the worst thing about Forever.
Yeah they are without a doubt going to struggle with this in many areas. But this is definitely the worst part of forever for me as well. In fact its my only true complaint. I am genuinely happy with it otherwise, but this really really is a frustrating change for me. And the fact that they solved this once before, is the most frustrating part. Though I'm sure its not as simple as copy and paste, the system they developed for classic worked well enough. And I wish they would do that or similar for forever.
4
u/KanedaSyndrome 2d ago
Agree 100 % - it's so incredibly damaging to the feel that people pop in and out of existence and you can't get a sense of seeing the same people in the world around you as you level
→ More replies (1)
10
u/iiNexius 3d ago
I knew as soon as I heard there weren't going to be servers that it was GG. We're stuck with sharding/CRZ and no sense of community. I'll miss my RP-PVP servers where people recognize each other.
10
u/Gassenger 2d ago
My whole thing that bugs me is being layered and prompted every like 3 minutes in the starter zone, and also being layered after leaving a party. That one sucks the most if you've grouped with people for a quest, and youre removed from their group after all the troll ballsacks are collected for everyone, and layered from a clear room to 50 trolls
39
u/17000HerbsAndSpices 3d ago
Just give us realms or something, ANYTHING other than this jank ass sharding system.
Last night I was exploring the Skyborne Zeppelin landing in Mulgore, walked over to Stonetalon thinking "oh this is neat" entered Stonetalon and immediately got jumped by an Alliance kill team the second I sharded in. Managed to get away and crossed back to Mulgore, they all immediately vanished and clearly got sent to another shard.
Layering like this SUCKS ASS on the PvP server.
4
u/Ok_Alfalfa4873 3d ago
Realms are a bad choice, more then 50% of the realms if not more will be dead and blizzard will charge people to get off the realm. Huge queues for the larger realms in this scenario without layers. This was the exact problem we had in classic-wotlk etc that lead to the layering system. Let's improve layering and make it a less invasive system, but please let's not forgot the history of what we played. No one wants 5 hour queues to play the game.
5
u/17000HerbsAndSpices 3d ago edited 3d ago
I mean sure, making layering somehow work sounds like a happy compromise but I truly cant think of how that would happen.
You have to draw the line in the sand somewhere, so are you going to dynamically create a new layer when a region of the world gets too high pop? That would mean that if you are in that area when it happens you still might just get layered out of nowhere. Which sucks.
Are you going to assign someone a layer when they log in and keep them there till they log out? That sounds like a good idea, until you start getting cross layer parties, which layer do they go to? Where do they go when they leave? What if half of a layer is in one instance or another, the world will feel empty to those still outside no?
What about allowing players to choose a layer to live on that they can manually change every, let's say 24 hours? That feels like the best option, except people on PvP servers specifically will just run back to the Capitol and manually hop servers when the zone they are questing in has higher than average PvP activity, versus having to tough it out and call in reinforcements which is half the fun of playing PvP.
Im more than happy to not just have servers again since the issues with them are fully justified and fair, but if people are just phasing in and out of existence, or if you aren't able to see people in your party despite the fact that they should be standing right next to you, or if I cant see the same random I met 4 days ago questing in silverpine then the MMO feeling is fundamentally broken.
Id rather Blizzard just forcibly recycle and relaunch realms at the top of every month and have enforced faction balance on at all times. Like, "hey its the first of October, that means you need to pick what realm all your characters get sent to again" but you're locked to PvP or PvE or something
17
u/ganon2234 2d ago
Full agree. I called it CRZ immediately. Anyone seeing the Payo clip from over a week ago should know. Phasing 3 times during a WPVP battle is unacceptable. It's to the point now where you shard even during transitions of subzones, ( like different areas within duskwood)
Why can't it be like guild wars or FFXIV where you can simply pick the layer from a drop down menu.
1
7
u/jonas-reddit 3d ago
I’ve never complained in the past or joined the debate. Realms, layering, shading, cross-realm all have come with pros and cons. I’ve always appreciated the complexity of any decision here.
But the current state of play isn’t fun. I’m not going to opine on how to fix it. But, it’s not fun.
Way too many people in one place and named mobs respawning sometimes on top of you within seconds.
Phasing in and out way too often. I barely have a chance to get to know people.
Camping isn’t really working out either. Have yet to join a camp where a word is said. They’re just awkward.
As was said by others. In many cases, the original proven experience is often the better one. Don’t change what worked. Maybe just up realm population.
8
27
u/cgull629 3d ago
Yup. Reminds me of entering and leaving diablo 4 cities. Immersion breaks immediately
12
u/Bio-Grad 3d ago
Yeah I knew it was coming when the devs avoided using the term layering in all the QAs and panels. They say shit like “refreshing” so as not to trigger us with the reality of the sharding.
7
u/Henkier 2d ago
Yeah, the worst part is how they are always forcing these layers/shards to be full, you leave a group that's in a fine enough layers then suddenly there's a hundred people on screen. All the cities also have way too many people in the same layer, what for?
I'm not naive like the people who think the game doesn't need this kind of system, but what we have implemented in the beta seems like the worst version so far.
If this is not because of limited beta server resources, then we're screwed on launch.
25
9
u/yksvaan 3d ago
It's easier to balance technically but yeah it sucks.
7
u/Mind-Game 3d ago
This should be the tagline for WoW Forever haha
If you look at any decision that's made differently than other versions of wow, it almost always boils down to ease of balance and maintenance.
9
u/greenpath10 2d ago edited 2d ago
If retail CRZ/sharding is in Forever, I will NEVER play it, ever. CRZ tech helped kill my love of wow - of being immersed in the world. CRZ separated everyone else from me and turned them into ghosts appearing/disappearing around me.
CRZ actually kills the feeling of being in a cohesive world (which is supposed to be the MAIN character)?!
6
94
u/kegatank 3d ago
There's basically no good way to solve the population problems that they are facing. How do you make it so the layers are all one continent but for the first month after launch everyone is crammed into a few of them? You make a bunch of different continent layers that are 90% empty except for a handful of zones.
The current solution has the fewest downsides while also allowing Forever to be serverless so we don't have to do transfers every time a server dies overnight because of a faction imbalance.
13
u/sknilegap 3d ago
The current solution has the fewest downsides while also allowing Forever to be serverless so we don't have to do transfers every time a server dies overnight because of a faction imbalance.
I think a mega-server is good. I think CRZ is bad. They could still do the mega server and do actual continent-wide layers.
I think having layers where the playerbase is consolidated into possibly only a few zones is a non-issue. It technically would come with a higher resource cost for Blizzard at the beginning of each "phase" but it is worth it to maintain the persistence between zones, in my opinion.
All I am saying is we don't have to settle for this solution. This solution was implemented at a time when flying mounts made crossing zones not noticeable, and therefore not really an issue. CRZ was fine for the expansion it was released in.
In a game where the world is to be the main character, the world and players (who are all on foot only) in it being divided up constantly kinda makes it no longer a world, but a grouping of tiny zones.
→ More replies (2)7
u/canitnerd 2d ago
There's basically no good way to solve the population problems that they are facing.
Of course there is. Use normal server architecture with a cap on how many characters can be on them and actually curate when and where transfers/character creation are enabled to keep populations healthy and prevent the formation of megaservers. If things get truly dire on a server merge it. Keep names unique per region like forever is already planning to do so that people don't need to worry about keeping their names through transfers or merges. Done. No layering, all the community benefits of normal server sizes, the only people who are upset are idiots who consider any server less than 10x the size of a 2006 vanilla server dead.
This isn't an unsolvable problem, it just requires blizzard to put in the bare minimum of effort and not listen to the screeching retards who want to transfer off their 55/45 split server due to faction imbalance
→ More replies (4)42
u/T00N 3d ago
Just make it so you can manually switch between "layers" like in OSRS
I'd also gladly take servers over this tbh, it's so antithetical to the classic MMO experience
12
8
u/TheChinOfAnElephant 3d ago
This is what I thought they were going to do when they were talking about how it sucks when your friends are on another server. Honestly, that whole opening is weird in hindsight because that is still going to be a potential issue. They didn’t solve that problem they just made it less likely.
→ More replies (6)1
u/Domain77 3d ago
1 server is 10x better than multiple servers. It always has been and was always the goal of MMOs limited by technology. Letting everyone play together is the goal and worth it
6
u/sknilegap 3d ago
You can still have 1 server and layering. I still want one server, I always play on the highest pop server. I just don't want people popping in and out of existence every single time I cross any border ever. The technology is there, they did it in classic.
12
u/iHaveComplaints 3d ago edited 3d ago
It would be an acceptable necessity if it only existed at launch, much as was promised when layers were implemented back in 2019. But they aren't going to convert from this sharding into full layers a month or two down the line. We're going to be stuck with sharding between zones in perpetuity.
Something good could be done by using all the various tech they've built trying to address these problems if they were to adjust it all with the specific goal of creating bespoke server communities within a back-end megaserver infrastructure, and give limited allowances within the system for "cross-realm" and peak load balancing.
10
u/Bohya 3d ago
I don't consider it to be a good compromise. This current form of layering is one of the reasons why I quit Retail. There are other solutions with less downsides. Activision-Blizzard just want to take the easy route and copy-paste this already established (albeit inherently broken) system from Retail.
→ More replies (11)1
u/Mind-Game 3d ago
The current solution has the fewest downsides while also allowing Forever to be serverless so we don't have to do transfers every time a server dies overnight because of a faction imbalance
"The current solution is the best solution besides the obvious best solution!"
I find it a little weird that you can totally write off all of the issues someone has with Sharding while saying it's the best solution, yet totally dismiss the idea of discrete realms because of the one (potentially manageable) problem they have in theory.
11
u/HaulfOf 3d ago
how is it theory when they've had to open realm transfers on every single classic release before this lmfao
3
u/canitnerd 2d ago
Because you don't have to have open realm transfers? Wow didn't have them for the majority of vanilla's 2004-2007 run and that's part of what led to that strong feeling of realm community that people miss so much.
0
u/Mjolnoggy 3d ago
>What is realm merging
Yeah, having servers is an unsolvable issue that never can be fixed. God forbid we ask the trillion dollar company for the bare minimum, that's on us.
→ More replies (4)0
u/sknilegap 3d ago
Most people aren't saying remove the mega server. I just want layers to be continent wide rather than zone wide.
CRZ sucks, and this is effectively that. They need to implement layers as described in this video from oldschool vanilla. And if this IS what we currently have then they need to get WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY less aggressive with layer switches, and not even trigger them on zone crossings.
3
u/BygoneFlower 3d ago
Discrete realms without layering don't work either. People will gravitate to the "correct" realms and then they will be unplayably busy at launch and for any new content. On the flipside, the game does not function at all for the low population realms in a way that predictably forces users to transfer away if they want to actually play, or more likely, quit.
3
u/Mind-Game 3d ago
Yeah, but considering they invented all of these server solutions like sharding and layering to make mega realms work, and they still kinda suck, don't you think there's a world where they could optimize realm balancing for regular unlayered/sharded realms?
Population caps, queues, and server locks or large servers, easy transfers from full realms to perfectly healthy but medium population realms, open transfers from low pop dying realms to other medium population realms, and straight up mergers of low pop realms into other low/medium realms would be possible to implement.
Blizz could implement a system where, on the back end, transferring servers for a character could be as easy as layer hopping on a mega server. And if they did that, they could implement all of the common sense tools to keep realms balanced and at healthy pops without having to charge for character transfers or only very sparingly offer free transfers.
Instead of everyone transferring to the best megaserver, people would just look to transfer to the best currently open healthy medium server until that server gets full and locks down, and then the next round of people would go to the next one.
It's not trivial and would take some trial and error to get right, but look at all of the trial and error and tradeoffs and development time we're dealing with to have these region wide megaservers.
4
u/Taggysham 3d ago
This is the first time that we have had "realmless" megaservers... where is this history of trial and error for this concept? For wows whole history it has been segregated servers with trial and error exactly how you have mentioned. They have tried allowing free transfers to medium populated servers countless times.. your whole comment is basically backwards lol
1
u/canitnerd 2d ago
It's not though. The only practical difference between this and anni's system, or sod/mainline classics system after they condensed down into a handful of servers, is that pvp players share a naming pool with pve players. Outside of that it's just scale.
1
u/Taggysham 2d ago
Yes exactly the same. Except there won't be dead and dying servers. Oh and you dont have to worry about having characters on your friends' servers outside of pve vs pvp. Oh and you dont have to worry about paying for server transfers. But yeah exactly the same
1
u/canitnerd 2d ago
Except there won't be dead and dying servers.
There won't be dead or dying servers if they properly manage normal servers either, they will just open transfers and merge as needed
Oh and you dont have to worry about having characters on your friends' servers outside of pve vs pvp
I've never worried about this because me and my friends just roll on the same server, and if I want to play with a friend on another server I'm happy to level a new character because leveling characters is part of the fun of classic.
Oh and you dont have to worry about paying for server transfers.
No one forces blizzard to charge 25 dollars for an automated transfer that costs a fraction of a cent but blizzard.
All of these downsides are entirely artificial due to blizzard's laziness and/or greed.
→ More replies (3)1
u/trilogique 3d ago
They have tried most of what you suggested and it has not worked. Locking servers breeds resentment because people can't play with their friends who are on those servers. Many medium servers are only medium in the initial frenzy, but die off as the game cools. Exactly what happened in Classic 2019. Players have historically hated forced merges so you can't do that. Free transfers are a bandaid fix that get people into the game, but basically ship them off to soon-to-be dead servers - assuming people even take the free transfer in the first place. Historically, it ends up being a stalemate because many players know the megaservers won't die and most importantly their friends are on the server so they don't want to leave.
That last one is really important because people play WoW in communities. Transferring a player is ezpz, but when you have large communities or guilds it becomes an enormous coordination effort let alone the risks. Imagine everyone going to another server and suddenly it's full because of the population cap and now some guildies can't make it. Some guildies may not even transfer at all because they had friends on the server so now you need to recruit a replacement. Also, some guilds won't transfer so now you've just decimated the remaining population. You're effectively turning servers into whack-a-mole and for communities that's a logistical nightmare. And I'm not even factoring in the gameplay (economical) abuse it introduces, or the mess it creates with PvP servers due to enforced faction balance.
There's no silver bullet here. Blizz just needs to rework some of the behavior and iron out bugs with the current system and it will be good enough.
1
u/LordBlackass 3d ago
Have a logical connection between servers which forms a group. Char and guild names are unique within the group. No physical interaction between servers. As a server reaches low pop it's consolidated with another server in the group. Names being unique in the group means no conflict. Each server in the group has traditional layers.
2
u/Rubzje 3d ago
It needs to be heavily tweaked with some logic based rules.
Make it so that it people that have been in combat in the past moments stay in the same layer as each other. Lock it in for a bit and if they don't engage they get the option to layer again.
I am sure there are more sophisticated patterns to be thought of, so they must be working on something. That we can be sure of.
1
u/Henkier 2d ago
But the whole point of layers is that they can create more or less according to the current player base, unlike fully separate realms /servers.
But in beta they are either trying to optimize the servers to have the least amount of layers created for lower costs, or the beta environment just can't handle as many layers as are needed for the current player base.
Hopefully it's the latter and a non issue on the official servers, but I have my doubts.
-1
u/TheClassicAndyDev 3d ago
Make 20 servers.
Limit them to max of 5k players or whatever arbitrary cap.
If concurrent players falls below a threshold, merge it with another server that is also low.
It's literally that simple. They already have the tech to do this seamlessly.
1
u/Squirrel-Sovereign 3d ago
What if the player number increases again?
1
u/ww_crimson 3d ago
Auto merge servers after new content releases and seeing what the rebounded population looks like. Don't ever merge two servers that are likely to result in the population being bigger than the biggest server.
1
1
u/Mjolnoggy 3d ago
Spin up a new server. Very easy.
2
u/Squirrel-Sovereign 3d ago
So if i log back after a year and my old server was full and got merged and now over the cap, i get transfered to a new server?
1
u/Mjolnoggy 3d ago
>my old server was full and got merged
You don't merge servers that are already full. Vast majority of empty servers were due to realm transfers, which Blizzard has all the receipts on, at which point you merge a server with people having transferred off with another server that has people that have transferred off.
Most dead servers don't usually happen because people stop playing, it happens because people stop playing there specifically.
1
u/Squirrel-Sovereign 3d ago
So if the people dont transfer away, but just stop playing, there is no merging and its ghost servers all the way.
1
u/Mjolnoggy 3d ago
If 10k+ people randomly decide to stop playing on one specific server, the game itself is already not doing well for whatever reason.
1
u/Squirrel-Sovereign 2d ago
No, thats just what happens when old content is solved and new content is released.
1
u/Mjolnoggy 2d ago
At that point it isn't an issue then, just wait until they release new stuff, easy.
→ More replies (0)→ More replies (9)0
u/advice_dontbuyiphone 3d ago
This is a factually incorrect opinion held by people who lack imagination. There are in fact multiple different ways to solve the problem.
→ More replies (2)3
u/kegatank 3d ago
And you chose, in your infinite wisdom, to list none of them here? Thanks for the input I guess, but I'm not your diary
1
5
u/Iamshmant 3d ago
Sharding/layering also completely breaks certain quests.
During anniversary I was doing the escort for the orc you have to walk all the way to BRM from burning steppes. Had to do it like 10 times until I would stop layering when I zoned from burning steppes into BRM.
Any other escorts that you happened to get layered while doing will also break. It’s actually the most frustrating thing to feel like your time was wasted and those escorts can be frustrating enough.
4
5
3
u/oldgodakshuly 2d ago
Did you not watch the honesty(c) Q&A? About layering, Aggrend said "our devs are wizards".
You're welcome.
4
3
u/buddhistredneck 2d ago edited 2d ago
“And if they ARE using layering, then you should NEVER layer someone on zone transition; especially automatically without that new prompt.”
Yea and Blizz also promised this while referring to hardcore.
I am a hard-core classic enjoyer, I love it.
But it would be so scary right now, and I would never invite anyone to any group, and I would never accept any invite.
You have no idea what you’re gonna load into.
We need a warning screen before we transfer.
3
u/Significant-Net487 2d ago
You can get layer just by declining an invite. The fact that recieving an invite can layer you regardless, is concerning for sure.
3
14
u/Master_Raro 3d ago
Layering, crz, sharding, all of it weakens immersion because you no longer feel like youre in a permanent world anymore. Many are complaining about what that means for gameplay but I'm more concerned about how it changes things socially. People behave differently when they know they'll never see others again. And I just love the og realm culture - its your crew, your version of the game. I personally think faction imbalance or low pop realms is the lesser of two evils, the other evil being shards and social impermanence.
4
3
u/gromulint 3d ago
completely agree, and I don't think blizzard has tried every reasonable solution to solve the faction imbalances and low pop server issues that they end up with when they do realms. Splitting zones like they are in WoWF sacrifices way too much.
2
u/missingpiece 2d ago
It was so sick running into familiar faces during Classic throughout the leveling process.
→ More replies (2)1
u/InZomnia365 2d ago
People behave differently when they know they'll never see others again.
Tbf they do have a system for this. As someone who plays retail, I can tell you the Familiar Faces thing in Forever actually works. I rarely see the same person twice in retail, I somewhat regularly do it on Forever, even when I switch between characters (seems based on account, not character).
3
u/Azakaa 2d ago
Agree. Jump on any boat and watch how no one you left port with is left on the boat as you arrive.
If you run across a zone boarder or open world dungeon you also see them disappear into thin air.
This is just the same old sharding where we can’t escape streamer guilds anymore by being on a specific server.
3
u/Exxige20 2d ago
Probably a stupid idea... It seems like sharding is here to stay but would there not be some way to tie adjacent shards together for seamless transition from zone to zone. For instance I am on shard 3 of Duskwood moving across to Westfall crosssing an invisible sharding border. Could they just transition players from shard 3 duskwood to the same shard of westfall? So anyone from shard 3 of duskwood would be moved to the same shard of the next zone. This would allow a seamless transition from the players perspective while also utilizing the shard system for efficiency.
3
u/dustyfeet88 2d ago
They should allow us to pick a preference.
I want to be around more people. I would rather be alone. Mixture of both, I don't really care.
So if you have the I want to be around more people on you won't be forced to layer when there's too many people. That would be the people who selected. I would rather be alone or idc
Because it sucks being in Redridge. Enjoying all the PVP and all of a sudden it says layer now or in 5 minutes.
4
u/tinylittlebabyjesus 2d ago
That pop up alone is immersion breaking.
3
u/LyannaSerra 2d ago
I’d much rather have the popup than be phased without warning mid combat or in a cave etc
3
u/InZomnia365 2d ago
Why am I being phased at all when I am in the zone. There must be thousands of people leaving/entering a zone at any time, it should be possible to put them on applicable layers.
FWIW, I've never had this issue in retail (other than when grouping, due to phasing to another server).
3
13
u/Seraphayel 3d ago
Give us as many servers as needed. Link them or do whatever it is necessary. If population dwindles, merge them. Layering / phasing is game and immersion breaking for a Classic experience.
9
u/DaytonaZ33 3d ago
And then what happens when a new patch or expansion comes out to the game and everyone comes back? You can’t “unmerge” a server.
6
→ More replies (5)3
u/Riktar71 3d ago
Too late for this. As late like removing skyborne or anything heavily announced...
7
u/OkTension334 3d ago
Not in the beta - how is the current population to mining/herbalism nodes feeling?
6
u/Steauxned 3d ago
They upped the spawn points and respawn rates of almost every resource I’ve noticed to the point where it’s very easy to level gathering profs.
→ More replies (2)1
u/gouranga_eatsoup 3d ago
its fine, there is so much shit around losing 1 or 2 is w/e, though i personally didnt have any problem with disapearing nodes ,played since day 1
7
u/Beginning_Green_740 3d ago
Let alone cross-zone transitions. This shit sucks bigly even in same zone on exact same spot. Sometimes it tries to refresh me like 5-6 times in a row. And it is not possible to disable it. There is nothing worse when you are about to complete the quest and it auto-moves you because those 5 minutes have passed.
Right now on Beta - it is absolute worst possible implementation. I would choose regular realm over this hot garbage any day.
8
u/tgyo90 3d ago
Layering never really existed as it was first explained. It's all been a lie. Sharding just masquerading.
4
u/Kabaal 3d ago
This zone to zone stuff happened in original Classic, too. It was weird, though. This was after they had disabled layers. I used to sit outside Org and watch players going in and out and they'd...flicker. They'd lag a bit. They'd disappear and then reappear. It was like the game was trying to shard them, and there was something in place to prohibit it. Which doesn't exist in Forever.
But yeah, this is clearly not Layering as they've described it. That's supposed to be a copy of the entire world. Or maybe just continent. But definitely not zone to zone.
2
u/CaBBaGe_isLaND 3d ago
That last part rings for me. My favorite thing about EverQuest was the traveling. It took a while to get to another area, and when you got there you accepted you would be there for a while. It was exciting and immersive. Then they gave us "Planes" and put a portal in every zone. That ended the experience for me permanently.
2
u/Cactusblah 2d ago
Layers should be consistent across the entire world like it was in Classic. Different layers across zone borders is unacceptable. Weather should also be consistent in the same zone on every layer. There are too many immersion-breakers currently.
2
u/FakeSafeWord 2d ago edited 2d ago
What if there was CRZ affinity?
Tie the entire worlds geographic set of zone shards to a layer. Each layer has one CRZ per geographic zone. Your default layer is the layer that you created your character on. You have the ability to manually pick a new preferred layer, maybe a 1 hour cooldown to not game it. You temporarily join other layers if you join a pug raid or a party. You are only automatically moved to another layers CRZ if your primary layer is at capacity, offline, experiencing performance issues or is empty. The affected CRZ would take itself out of the load balancing queue. The next time you change zones it attempts to put you back to your preferred layer if the conditions are allowed. If a layer has chronic low pop, it notifies the players that they will all be moved to the same new default layer together so they can take it offline.
The only people that would vanish or appear between CRZ transitions would be those who were temporarily on a CRZ other than their own, returning to their own. It wouldn't solve it 100% but it would only be a couple of people every once in a while and not seemingly completely random shuffling of entire crowds back and forth. It should be an exception, not being witnessed every time you cross a zone back and forth.
It would give a tremendous amount of more community-continuity than the current system and still largely provide the tech/performance/cost benefits.
2
u/dream_walker09 2d ago
Glad someone said it. People are just gaslighting themselves about the past and spreading made up and wrong information. "Layering" as announced is not what was happening on the Forever Beta. Idk why anyone thought it was.
2
3
u/GreenEyedRascal 1d ago
Yes, i feel layering is okay sharding is just a retail degen crap that destroys immersion.
3
u/Minimum-Positive792 1d ago
Whenever I go from one zone to another everyone around me disappears. Then everyone around me disappears for seemingly no reason
2
u/Chelmos 3d ago
Can a more tech savy/a game dev explain what's the benefit of sharding vs layering? Is it more efficient or something? I'm just thinking if there's really a difference with era, why did they change it at all?
16
u/Meto1183 3d ago
It would let them balance the zones for an appropriate amount of people. Ex 100 people are in one kalimdor layer. 30 each faction of the starting areas, 15 each faction of darkshore/ashenvale/barrens/stonetalon.
Well balanced gameplay occurs.
Then the remaining 10 people are spread out among ungoro, feralas, thousand needles, and tanaris. They experience a ghost town the whole way.
With “sharding” blizz can just dump people into zones until they’re full. So while there may be 100 times as many shards for the starting zones to hold everyone, there’s only 1 shard for feralas. But the 30 people actually in feralas can be on the shard together.
I am not a server architect but from a “feel” perspective all we really need from blizzard is a little continuity walking from durotar to the barrens. Some amount of letting a zone overpopulation/underpopulate so that in a 20 minute window if 6 people cross a bridge from durotar/barrens (in either direction) they all end up on the same shard still. If it can’t be persistent for more than half and hour let alone for days on end well, that’s just how it is.
3
u/Wakti-Wapnasi 2d ago
I can't be the only one who likes when some zones are emptier than others. I like to get the feeling of "noone really comes here". It's immersive. I don't want to be with 29 other players in every zone I ever go to no matter what.
3
u/sknilegap 3d ago
Not a dev, but a server/network engineer. They would save on resource costs by not loading up multiple large maps with big portions of them empty.
Like lets say for whatever reason STV has a ton of activity, with this version they only spin up duplicate STVs. With layering they would duplicate eastern kingdoms, so multiple STVs still to accomodate the players, but also multiple of every other eastern kingdoms zone with all the mods wandering even if players arent interacting.
Now, for a company their size, I wouldn't think this to be a huge resource cost. At least from the amount of resources it takes to spin up a private vanilla wow instance, its not super demanding even on a personal level.
That being said, I have no clue what other spaghetti garbage is taxing the servers when it comes to the retail client. That could be more stress than the classic one. It is pretty unfortunate they stripped the retail client down rather than adding to the classic client to make forever.
4
u/gleedblanco 3d ago edited 3d ago
you don't need to physically load data of areas that no players are in. ask your favorite LLM how the open source private servers do it. it's a very basic, standard pattern.
but it would be true that a server that has to simulate all areas of the game with players actually in it at once would just need more memory than a server type that only ever simulated one. I just don't think this is the reason against layer, wow is fairly cheap to simulate all things considered.
if you keep the full world one logical unit various other operations become a lot more problematic and less modular. you need to think about how to dynamically create a new layer and how to merge existing ones if they nearly die out.
when you create a new one, who do you move there? do you abduct random players from other layers? or just put the few players who are lucky/unlucky enough onto nearly empty layers? what if the world distribution of players becomes extremely lopsided: 95% of them are in major cities or some endgame raids - you cannot physically maintain a full world copy on a layer while keeping up a reasonable player distribution in the other areas, you will either have some nearly empty layers in many areas or a lot of layers with a low player count in those low density areas. so even in that case you need some kind of special rules.
sharding makes those problems trivial. e.g. in the latter example, you will just have a lot of orgrimmar shards but only one 'ass of nowhere' shard which has a nice and perfect player count.
which is not to say that it's unsolvable, but it's probably a harder problem than keeping it modular via 'shards'. also by sharding they are categorically excluding certain possibilities like having smooth cross zone transitions that are not disruptive in some way - since two shards are never guaranteed to be on the same physical server (probably) in the general case, you always have to have some big handoff of data.
1
u/SoulSella 3d ago
How many world servers could they run on a realistic machine? I mean my dream would be 3-400 "worlds" like runescape that each had a player cap. So world 111, or 222 could be your "home world" but if it was full then you could go somewhere else. Like would this really be that expensive?
Sounds like this lets them do some automatic load balancing that effectively let's them use less total hardware / space in a server rack?
3
u/sknilegap 3d ago
Virtualization from an infrastructure POV has come a long way. Servers are quick and painless to spin up and decommission. I don't think this is a hardware problem.
This is more of a game design/software solution/problem. There are a ton of ways they could do it differently each with its own time/resources costs (both upfront and after the fact). Anything is possible with time and money, but modifying the existing 'solution' is likely the path of least resistance for them.
3
u/Samsbase 2d ago
I'm developer and engineer that has a lot of experience deploying cloud infrastructure.
Sorry to say this but its actually a lot more complex than that.
First you have to divorce the idea of there being some sort of ratio of worlds to server hardware on some rack somewhere.
These days its more realistic to think of all of your servers blobbed together as one big pool of resources. Where those resources exists matters to an infrastructure engineer but in software its a lot more ambiguous.
I'll make some assumptions here but it'll be a good analogy.
Imagine you have a piece of software called "Zone Player communication". All this software does is handle all of the location of where the players in a zone are and sends their actions back and forth from the server and all the other players around them. It doesn't even care what the zone is, its just sending numbers back and forth.
We often call this type of software a microservice. It's purposely designed to do a very specific job and purposely doesn't do things like handling loot or the chat or whatever that it doesn't need to do.
Now lets say our blob of servers has 100 CPU cores and 1000GB of RAM (probably small numbers for what blizzard is using).
What layers probably are, is one microservice that has been spun up to handle players in a zone (from observing I actually think its much smaller than a zone). You write code when that happens to allocate resources from your pool for this. Say 2CPU cores and 10GB of RAM arbitrarily.
In testing you know that with that amount of resources you can handle 100 players safely, so you write some code that when you have 101 players, you spin up a second one. Well then you'd have 1 maxed and one with 1 player in it. Well this isn't ideal as you still have one maxed out and one really low, so probably what is happening is they take 51 and leave them there and send 50 to a new one so you have two comfortably half full.
But what if you always hover around 101 players ? I've got 2 microservices using 2CPU and 10GB of RAM each but i'm barely using just over half of it.
Well then we get into elastic capacity. We then run benchmarks and tests to work out the average amount of players in areas of the game and then taylor how many resources we allocate to that microservice when we spin it up.
With this you'll see something like Stormwind/Ironforge/Orgrimmar actually getting spun up with way more resources and maybe Ashenvale by default spun up with less by default.
We can adjust this on the fly if I want as many players together as possible. Maybe I have 300 players consistently in an area, lets spin up a new triple size version then slowly push all of the players into there so they are all together.
Now you see how hard this is, you need to constantly try and guess how many players are in a given area then spin up and down just enough resources from your pool that you aren't wasting a bunch that could be used for something else but not too few either.
Finally lets take a time to think about all the other things they are trying to do, putting people in the same layers as friends and guildies and same-language players.
This is a hard problem, and I don't even know most of the issues they are trying to solve behind the scenes..
TLDR: This shit hard.
→ More replies (2)1
u/Yodl007 2d ago
To mention something else: Resource gathering. With this you can have 20 shards of raid entrance zone shards, and 1-4 zones of resource farming zones. Megaserver inflation again but this time even worse, because at least then there were those layers at raid times. now not even that.
1
u/SexyDraenei 2d ago
with layers its one layer for the whole world.
shards/crz its per zone.
layers is better player experience, shards is more efficient
1
u/BadSanna 2d ago
Smaller area means more dynamic allocation of resources and enables more control over when people get layered. If there are 100 people in the northern barrens and almost no mobs to tag, they can split off a few new shards of that area without having to spin up an entire continent. So now you ha e say 25 people competing for that area, but lets say 1 from each shard finishes the quest and run back, Both layers they would never see each other because the whole world is separate, and they can't be com ined because ghr 25 people interested segment they are all populatig would get forced back into an overpopulated bunch.
So that area might have 4 shards, but the contiguous areas only have one each. When people leave the highly populated shards they all layer to the one available and then that area feels more populated. Whereas if they spun up a whole continent, it just splits the 100 people into 4 groups, then when they leave the dense segment they don't see anyone because they're all split between 4 layers.
Hope that helps.
→ More replies (1)1
u/Heidrpoo 3d ago
Imagine you really like blue M&Ms. The only way you can get them is by buying full bags of M&Ms and picking out the blue ones. You have to buy multiple bags and you end up spending a lot of money just to throw out the non-blue ones. Then I invent a product that’s just a bag of blue M&Ms and you end up paying a lot less for what you’re actually eating.
Then a crabapple comes along and whines that the blue M&Ms taste better when they’ve been sitting next to other colors in the packs.
2
u/Kiereco 2d ago
I freaking knew that I was layering when I was changing zones and it always pissed me off. I never liked it in retail and I don't like it here. It's extremely jarring every time going into Undercity.
Every time I take a boat I always end up on another boat normally buy myself or with one other person where the boat previously had like 20 plus people.
3
9
u/TheClassicAndyDev 3d ago
Yep. It's awful.
Utterly awful.
Please blizzard, just give us many smaller, normal servers. If they die, merge them. You already have the tech with the first/last name system.
Please, I can't stand these fake realm cluster shared servers.
1
u/tinylittlebabyjesus 2d ago
I just feel like Blizzard could've just.. merged smaller realms.
I suspect they're spending all this time and money on trying to avoid just spending the time and money to merge the smaller realms when necessary. Or cap the server size at something reasonable. Is it all the streamers and their fan clubs wanting to be together and Blizzard wanting the streamer collab fanclub cash that's driving the issue?
1
u/Spiritual_Task1391 2d ago
Make this into a forum thread and we'll pour in. It's not gonna mean anything here and you'll get a LOT of support there
2
u/Kinetic_Symphony 2d ago
I do not understand why more MMOs don't adopt Runescape's system. Is it really that difficult?
At any point, your character can log out and switch to another server within seconds. If the one you're on right now is low in population, hop to a high-pop world. Or vice versa, whatever your preference at the time.
1
u/Zallestial 2d ago edited 2d ago
The best most fair solution I can think of might be possible if Blizzard can make their servers even more capable.
Instead of just having local layers for every zone the server would need a dynamic layer on top of the current system to balance out player load in small areas and over zone borders. And prevent player group splitting when zoning to new areas.
Example 1: A small group of players talk to each other, buff each other or have a PvP battle over factions near zone border.
Server keep track of all players that interacted with each other or with each others groups in some way the past 30sec? 60sec? and make sure they remain in the same layer when crossing zone border.
Example 2: Several raid groups are having a PvP battle near a zone border or anywhere in a zone.
Server create a small local layer in the area of the raid groups, independant of the zone layers.
Lets call it dynamic event layer. Triggered by a large amount of players in large groups interacting with each other in a small area. This independant layer will take priority for players moving in and out of just this small area without disrupting layering in the zone as a whole as well as boardering zones.
The idea might be very hard to make reality, but it's the only most fair solution to this problem I can think of that will at least retain immersion of the world for most players while also allowing for large scale battles with hundreds of players in a small area.
2
u/Infamous-Metal-103 1d ago
Agree. As soon as people start disappearing and stuff the world is fucked and immersion broken
1
u/tethysian 3d ago
Is it the same thing they have on the Anniversary server? I just started there and it was bizarre getting on the boat with one group of people and leaving with another.
1
u/sknilegap 3d ago
I have not played anniversary, but this is not the same as it was in original classic vanilla.
2
→ More replies (1)1
u/canitnerd 2d ago
Yes, Anni is the same but you do not run into the same severe issues due to lower pops.
1
1
u/Coffee_Conundrum 3d ago
Hmmmm, I can't remember if vanilla had it but I know Turtle WoW did, there was a zone handoff with certain zone boundaries, like between Elwynn and Westfall you could see it with a buddy where if they cross over a point on the bridge they'd disappear unless they crossed back over or you crossed over as well.
3
u/sknilegap 3d ago
This is the missing part though, you crossing over you'd see them. In forever, unless you are grouped, you do not.
1
1
u/youfoundKim 3d ago
I'm just happy people are starting to realize that layers are for the game. Not long ago I would get downvoted for saying that layers are bad.
0
u/bubba_love 3d ago
This architecture change would be a very big lift for them to move away from. They're more likely to try and put lipstick on the pig than they are to overhaul from sharding to layers especially bc they moved from layers to sharding bc it'll be too much load on 1 super-mega realm per ruleset
2
2
u/sknilegap 3d ago
While I agree, they are gunna need a whole lot of lipstick. CRZ doesn't matter in retail because they had flying, so persistance through zones didn't matter as much. At that point, everyone was already just trying to "get through" the world to get to max asap, and once they could fly they didn't even notice it.
But in a version of the game where the world is to be the main character, it feels really bad to constantly phase in and out.
If they simply can not implement layering, they need to do a pseudo layering system with sticky CRZ so they try to keep the same players together as often as technically possible.
2
u/bubba_love 3d ago
Does it come off like I'm in support of this? It's obviously a massive problem
1
u/sknilegap 3d ago
No no not at all, its a huge problem. I just agree they are only going to try to put lipstick on a pig though. Just adding more context for others since we have seen this road before lol.
2
u/Worldly-Shop-3850 3d ago
"Sticky CRZ" sounds like a fair compromise. When you cross a zone on foot/mount, you stay in that instance. You only get switched when using a flight path or other forms of teleportation (e.g. mage teleport or warlock summon)
2
u/sknilegap 3d ago
When ungrouped John mcbuff paladin buffs me as we are crossing a zone, I just wanna be able to say thank you on the other side and buff him back too. However they solve that is up to them, I'm sure there are a ton of different ways they could try. But as it is now, every time I swap zones I see different people. Not often, not sometimes, every time.
That fuckin sucks :/
254
u/StamosLives 3d ago
It’s worst on neutral boats - Booty Bay in particular.
Leave on a boat full of horde. Zone in to a boat full of ally.