How does layering works?

[Zmatter-outland]

I thought layering was gonna be like 1k players on each layering and that layering is like its own server, thus making the server unable to become full?
Why cant blizzard just open up these like temporary servers so people can play the game they pay money for each month?
Do you get what i mean?
Regards from 9k queue on firemaw @ 10.55 am

[Grimboone-dreadmist]

They have no problem increasing server size, expect that one day layering will be gone and that will create a new problem

[Zmatter-outland]

Well i dont know much about computers but i mean, its 2019 and i ended up at 23k queue 3 days ago at 5pm…
One would think that blizzard, the biggest gaming company in the world would’ve taken action against these problems before even launching the game.

[Yannie-gehennas]

It’s simple. They dont want to increase realm size, because down the road that would creat a whole lot of problems that would be unsolvable. Imagine 50 people fighting for a kobold kill in goldshire.
Solution for now is to have no queue servers and leave it to people - wait hours in queue or spread to other low pop realms. This way things can get balanced. Other problem is stubborn people who dont want to move, but it’s up to them again - queue or reroll

[Grimboone-dreadmist]

blizzard don’t have a problem increasing the servers, but that would just cause problems later, when there will only be one layer, you can’t have 20k people on one server. wouldn’t be mats or mobs or anything to farm for people

[Blurey-gehennas]

First of servers(hardware) is the phisical representation of realms(software).
Now layering works in a manner that it creates on a realm virtual images of the same realm.So lets say Gehennas is my server/realm and it has 4 layers each able to carry 3k population,meaning the server pop capp is 15k.
What you suggest makes removing layering for phase 2(that blizzard is heavily committed) quite difficult.You cant make 30k population on a server with 30k registered accounts to get back to the realm from time to time,not to mention what will it do to the quees on that realm through its lifespan.(hence why they should have locked some realms on day one,but hey)

The current best possible solution is for them to add 5 more pvp realms and offer people free transfers to those realms.

[Ashaïa-kaelthas (Ashaïa)]

@Yannie-gehennas

It’s simple. They dont want to increase realm size, because down the road that would creat a whole lot of problems that would be unsolvable.

True, though in fact they DID increase realm size.
They seem ridiculously afraid to open new servers, and prefer to take the risk to ruin the game by stockpiling layers rather than actually open enough servers.

[Lavabeard-firemaw]

It doesn’t

[Vivec-mograine]

I wish they’d turn it off in cities at least. Orgrimmar feels so empty sometimes but when I try to find someone to have something crafted for me, I can’t see them until they invite me to their layer, which is also rather empty. This is in a full server btw so I assume there are tons of layers in Org. What’s even the point in putting layers in cities? It’s not like we’re doing quests there.

[Grimboone-dreadmist]

layer is world wide, not zone wide, so they can’t turn it of in certain areas

[Vivec-mograine]

Really? I thought they said it was only for certain zones, such as Durotar and the Barrens.

[Dornisus-draenor (Dornisus)]

Layering is basically sub-servers on the main server, with an overflow mechanic. So when you’re logging in, you’re assigned to a layer that has available space. And when you’re done playing, you leave that layer. It’s a fairly “old” technique so to speak, I’ve come across it on Guild wars 2, The secret world and Elder scrolls: Online. They call it by different things but in essence it’s the same.

The more sub-servers you add the more complicated the database becomes. People will move between layers as they group up with friends (since the only way to move between layers is to group up with someone on a different layer than you) and people come and go, creating space in the layer. The essence of the tech is to make the world full without over-crowded. So they also need to “close” layers that are under populated.

They are adding layers but I don’t think there’s enough sub-servers to take off the worst peak hours, and queues will therefore happen. They have increased the server cap and have opened new servers as well, but I understand them that they don’t want too many servers going on since that will leave problems down the end of the line.

I think their best solution would be to have 4 mega servers (PvP, RPPvP, RP and PvE) and funnel all servers into layer technology much like what Guild Wars 2 did. That game was highly anticipated, but it also had one of the smoothest MMO releases I’ve been part of. No queue, what so ever. I logged in and was assigned a sub-server, and was smoothly moved into the “live” game when a spot was open. Yes that’s right, I played the game while in queue.

[Lumatar-ghostlands (Lumatar)]

From the AMA

We’ve seen some confusion about layering, both about how it helps support our launch, and how it’s supposed to behave while its active, so I’d like to both speak to it and clear up some misconceptions about it.
First, we’re absolutely committed to reducing to one layer per realm before our second content phase goes live, and the sooner we can get there, the better. The reason we can’t do that initially is that on launch day, everybody will be clustered in the starting zones, and having players so close together causes an exponential drain on server resources. In fact, the same number of players cause more server problems crammed into Northshire than they do spread across all of Elwynn Forest. We expect that even after the first couple of days, we’ll need fewer layers than we need for the initial hours of launch, and our stress tests have confirmed that expectation.
A related concern that was raised during our pre-launch test was that capital cities felt empty, but that only occurred because we left the pre-launch test running two days past its original end date, and we didn’t reduce the number of layers at all during that test. During our launch week, as the players spread out across the world, we’ll monitor activity and reduce layers as necessary, so the world continues to feel full.
Some players have suggested using sharding in low level zones to address launch demand, both because we talked about that at Blizzcon, and because it’s what they’re used to from our modern expansions. Unfortunately, while modern WoW has content designed to work with sharding, WoW Classic does not. The most obvious example of incompatible content is Rexxar’s famously long patrol path, but there are lots of other examples throughout WoW Classic. Since we want all that content to work as it was originally designed, we’ve made sure that every layer is a copy of the entire world, so you can kite Anachronos all the way to Orgrimmar, and you can ride the boat from Ratchet to Booty Bay with the same people alongside you the whole way.
Some players have asked us to use realm caps and login queues to handle the demand, and while those are tools we have at our disposal, we don’t want to rely on them exclusively, because they keep people from playing the game.
One of the most frequently reported problems during our tests was players transferring to a layer for what seemed like no reason. There were several bugs that caused this, and we’re confident we’ve fixed them. At this point, the only thing that should cause you to change layers is accepting an invite from a player on another layer. Additionally, it should always transfer the player who was invited to the layer of the player who invited them.
Nonetheless, after accepting an invite, the layer transfer doesn’t always happen immediately, because we don’t want to transfer you in the middle of combat, or before you get a chance to loot. During our pre-launch test, we saw a few reports of what seemed like random layer transfers, but when we investigated, we realized this was due to us making that transfer delay too long. The delay was so long that players could unintentionally chain one delay into another by starting combat immediately after looting. Because of those reports, we’ve fixed the transfer delay to give you enough time to loot, without being so long that you’re left wondering why you can’t join your friend. We’ll keep an eye on that, and we may decide to reduce it further.
We’ve also seen reports of people transferring suddenly at the entrances to capital cities, which was related to the transfer delays. If you’re waiting to transfer to your friend’s layer, and you enter a capital city, we ignore the delay and transfer you immediately. The long delays were making it more likely that you’d enter a capital with a transfer pending, and now that we’ve reduced the transfer delay, it will be a bit more clear that your transfer was the result of accepting a group invitation.
Regarding PvP, we saw many posts from players wondering if getting invited to a party is a good way to escape from PvP combat. I’m pleased to say there’s actually a separate, longer transfer delay following any PvP combat. We know a lot of world PvP enthusiasts are excited for WoW Classic, and we don’t want the additional layers to feel like they’re robbing you of your kills. When the time comes to withdraw from the fight, you’ll have to escape from your enemies and get to a safe place before you’re able to join your friends on another layer.
I’d also like to clarify how multiple layers work with logout. Early in our stress testing, players reported that logging out and back in would let you hop to a new layer to farm the same mineral or herb node on different layers. That was a bug, and we’ve fixed it. Your layer assignment now persists for a few minutes between logouts, long enough that by the time the game would choose a new layer for you, that node would have respawned on its own anyway.

[Trovlak-aggramar (Trovlak)]

@Ashaïa-kaelthas

They seem ridiculously afraid to open new servers,

You do realise that the kind of servers Blizzard need, you can’t walk into PCWorld and pick up a handful?

They will be built to order and build to order takes:
a) Time
b) Lots of money. Its not unheard of for enterprise grade servers to cost £20,000+

Then they have to configure them, install them, reconfigure their internal networks to be able to route clients to them.

And then when the hype dies down, they will be stuck with a £20k server, that they no longer have a use for.

Anyone with a brain would be leery about that kind of outlay, knowing that it will become surplus to requirements very rapidly.

[Blurey-gehennas]

@Dornisus-draenor

I think their best solution would be to have 4 mega servers (PvP, RPPvP, RP and PvE) and funnel all servers into layer technology much like what Guild Wars 2 did. That game was highly anticipated, but it also had one of the smoothest MMO releases I’ve been part of. No queue, what so ever. I logged in and was assigned a sub-server, and was smoothly moved into the “live” game when a spot was open. Yes that’s right, I played the game while in queue.

That’s sharding in WoW,and it causes heavy server load trying to balance each realm population across all servers.Also makes 40 people in each zone servers go havoc(just look at the retail servers for example).Now true modern wow has more spell effect/visual/calucaltions per data sent to server then classic but they also made it that it’s trying to balance factions/and enabled premade group tool that also adds additionl stress.In short it would make it smoother but it wount help out with the fact they need to make it that there is 3k players at the end of phase 2.And for sure people would hate it for the sake of the community vibe Vanila WoW is so fond for people to remember it by.

I will just add this,there best possible solution is to lock down the heavy realms,open new pvp realm and offer people FCM to those realms to eass the load.

[Dornisus-draenor (Dornisus)]

@Blurey-gehennas

That’s sharding in WoW,and it causes heavy server load trying to balance each realm population across all servers.Also makes 40 people in each zone servers go havoc(just look at the retail servers for example).Now true modern wow has more spell effect/visual/calucaltions per data sent to server then classic but they also made it that it’s trying to balance factions/and enabled premade group tool that also adds additionl stress.In short it would make it smoother but it wount help out with the fact they need to make it that there is 3k players at the end of phase 2.And for sure people would hate it for the sake of the community vibe Vanila WoW is so fond for people to remember it by.

Sharding is not megaserver structure, it’s basically sub-servers as well. The mega server structure would mean that the world would always have people in it, since it fills up the layers to ensure it has a healthy population. It also means they don’t have to add new servers and make people move to those servers, they can just add servers where needed and stack-overflow people into those serves as needed.

Having a server structure as they have now, is just creating problems for them down the line. A mega server structure is a whole lot better of a server structure than what we have.

[Blurey-gehennas]

@Dornisus-draenor

Sharding is not megaserver structure, it’s basically sub-servers as well. The mega server structure would mean that the world would always have people in it, since it fills up the layers to ensure it has a healthy population.

Do you really think they are using one server(hardware) for the megaserver(realm) tech in guild wars?

@Dornisus-draenor

Having a server structure as they have now, is just creating problems for them down the line. A mega server structure is a whole lot better of a server structure than what we have.

What there end goal is and how they are dealing with it now for the long run is the best possible solution.I repeat “remove layering for phase 2,and have 3k healty realms” thats the goal.
Your whole mega server idea goas against everything the Classic project stands for.No one wants to see people phase out on diffreint layer/shards.
They only need to add more realms and offer people transfers to them.Cause they are now having 15k pop realms with 10k quees on them.Even after the hype and “tourist” they need to even the balance and move those people…simply put add more realms.
Also guild wars idea of pvp is something like we had in WoW with the open world pvp zones,they dont have this concept of non stop pvp realms and pve realms.They just have pve realms with pvp zones in them.

[Dornisus-draenor (Dornisus)]

@Blurey-gehennas

Do you really think they are using one server(hardware) for the megaserver(realm) tech in guild wars?

Haven’t said that either. What I’m saying is that for the player, there is one server.

@Blurey-gehennas

What there end goal is and how they are dealing with it now for the long run is the best possible solution.I repeat “remove layering for phase 2,and have 3k healty realms” thats the goal.
Your whole mega server idea goas against everything the Classic project stands for.No one wants to see people phase out on diffreint layer/shards.

The goal they’re setting out on, is to have a healthy server population where the world feels alive. Currently it’s working fine, but how will it be down the line? It’s not healthy either for the game to have dead servers with no population on them.

@Blurey-gehennas

They only need to add more realms and offer people transfers to them.Cause they are now having 15k pop realms with 10k quees on them.Even after the hype and “tourist” they need to even the balance and move those people…simply put add more realms.

Simply adding more realms leads us right back to the problem that caused X-Realms and server merges to happen. That’s why they’re tentative on adding too many servers as well, and why they try to experiment with adding more layers to increase the server capacity. When the plug fell out of WoW back in Cata, we ended up with a heap of low populated realms with no community at all. They tried to get people to move from the populated realms but honestly, who the heck would move from a realm with people to a realm without people?

[Blurey-gehennas]

@Dornisus-draenor

That’s why they’re tentative on adding too many servers as well, and why they try to experiment with adding more layers to increase the server capacity. When the plug fell out of WoW back in Cata, we ended up with a heap of low populated realms with no community at all.

Thats why they dont go overboard with how many to add,but a fools bet is by the numbers,and how they had to incress the layers it would be a safe bet to add 5 more pvp realms + one pve and offer FCM to those who want on them.

@Dornisus-draenor

They tried to get people to move from the populated realms but honestly, who the heck would move from a realm with people to a realm without people?

They tryed to move consatnly people from High to Low realm pop since the tech back then for open world and instances where the same servers and it made raiding unberrable,now days its not the case.And as you mentioned the game just started to lose players/subs as it grew older.They also should have offered people fcm and close down servers back then but hey blizzard is to proud,and WoWs community is pretty dam entitled,there is always this 3-5 guys then end up not being happy with the decision on the forums,in this case “mah names!”.