If it’s fake disregard my post then. I really want to believe something is being done, otherwise the remove layering bandwagon is looking really good right now.
There’s no evidence of it being fake so I would take that claim with a hefty grain of salt.
I suppose the big tell would be to find out how many APES members were banned, seeing as they rampantly abused layers and even streamed themselves doing it.
I swear, in my short time on these forums I haven’t seen anyone more committed to being in the wrong about absolutely everything.
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It’s unbelievable how dumb you “exploit” whiners are
Guess what, the amount of layers on a server is proportional to the amount of players.
Ergo, same goes for the amount of resources available, wether it’s devilsaur or black lotus.
Even if there was only 1 layer from the start devilsaurs for example would still be controlled by one certain group of people, the only exception is that there would be a massive shortage of supply, meaning that these resources would cost a looooot and be pretty much unobtainable for the average joe… and guess what the group controlling the resource would be rich af, prolly way richer than with layering, since layering actually makes it easier for the average player to get some resources themselves.
They investigated at the time when all the wild claims were being made. There didn’t seem to be much evidence backing what people claimed they had. Screenshots were from private servers or photoshopped. The gains were very much exaggerated. That’s why they just increased the c/d rather than needed to take action against anyone.
I think some are just blinkered when it comes to layering. They’ll remove it by Phase 2 but when that is, no one knows.
Because you are the authority on what is right and wrong. That’s now how it works. 
Layering is there for a purpose. Thanks to layering I wont end up on a dead realm and have to face paying for a realm transfer further down the line. Merging hasn’t been possible in Retail for years. There is no reason to think they can do it for Classic. There has been no mention of merges anywhere from Blizzard unless I missed that. They said they would offer FCM (which they are) and that paid transfers would be something they’d consider once more of the player base was max level.
This is why there should have been vanilla sized realms with no layering.
You are correct that resources gathered by layer hopping scale with the population on a realm, except that’s not the way vanilla was designed. There were large population differences between realms in vanilla as well, it was the intended design that resources like devilsaur leather or black lotuses do not scale with the population.
Second, with layer hopping the efficiency of the practice is much higher than originally intended. Black Lotuses were balanced to spawn once or twice per area, with large distances between spawns. It’s a huge leap from that design when a player is able to harvest 4 times that, but with close to no travel.
Third, if layer hopping is a legitimate practice like you say, then in effect this adds a crucial new mechanic that wasn’t there in vanilla, but that everyone has to use to keep up with the pack. We all know the stated goal of Blizzard with Classic was nochanges, so it’s clear to me that this is not a feature they intended to add, it’s just an abuse of a feature that was supposed to do it’s thing in the background, not something that is deliberately manipulated by the players.
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Layers are intended, but to jump between them to farm rare materials is not. They did increase the delay between jumping layers for a reason
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Disregard any official Blizzard interviews about Classic. Layering was not supposed to be in the game in 2017, but it magically came to be the best “solution for dead realms” in 2019.
Layer hopping is a mechanic created and authorised to be used by Blizzard, because the idea behind it is that server population will be 2-3 times higher than what it was in vanilla, so it would need 2-3 times more resourses.
That’s just mental gymnastics you do to justify the copious exploiting you probably did. If Blizzard intended that layer hopping was this new mechanic everyone would use deliberately, they would have 1. announced it and endorsed it 2. made a switch layer button in the UI.
Layer hopping is an abuse they did not foresee or more likely, that they decided to tolerate because Classic is managed by retail devs who don’t care about things like game economy and made it optional in their retail game.
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Ok but the core of the design is working as intended, it being abused was never their intent obviously.
Sure, layering has some problems, but it’s what we got… just getting really tired of these doom & gloom threads that pop up every day by now.
Yes some people get more resources like black lotus thanks to layering, but it also makes black lotus cheaper, it’s not the end of the world.
Honestly seeing how some people freak out about this small thing makes me wonder what they’d do if there was a single layer and they would have a legit devilsaur mafia on their server
And thats what an exploit is, using a system for a gain that is not the designers intent.
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Yes some people get more raid epics, but it also makes raid epics more available, it’s not the end of the world.
Would you be just as dismissive about that statement? You probably wouldn’t because retail has convinced everyone raiding is all that matters and everything else is secondary.
The economy is a big part of an oldschool MMORPG like Classic, it’s the main driver of social interaction and something where a player could gain or lose an edge, just like speccing correctly or using the correct rotation.
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What you just described is smart use of game mechanics, not an exploit. By your logic half the encounters in mythic raiding that I designed tactics for for a bigger part of the last decade were exploited.
Example of one of my own tactics that got a fair bit of attention at the time.
Halfus wyrmbreaker heroic, everytime you opened a cage halfus would gain a damage taken increase. Obviously the design here was to open one, kill the mobs/boss that came out of it and move on to the next.
Oversight here? Disc priest healing scaled with damage taken increase. I put a insane amount of disc priests in the raid, 5 tanks, and a bucket load of mages that would combust the boss. Open everything at once, bruteforce the boss. We woudn’t die because the healing we took from the discs was mental.
The week after? Design of the fight changed, disc healing no longer scaled with damage taken increase. Did I get banned or our loot taken away? No, do you know why? Because we didn’t exploit, we found a way to kill the boss that wasnt their intended way to do so without bugging the encounter we simply outsmarted them.
Nostalrius doesn’t lose money by banning people, thats the difference.
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Yet people have received bans for actual exploiting until next year. But no no it’s all about the money 
“Clever use of game mechancis” are just what exploiters say to sound less bad, if you google Video game exploits you will see that game system abuse indeed fall under that, but i guess that depends on how you chose to define the word.
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Ok so what is your argument against what I just said? Mythic raiders find ways to kill bosses they never intended all the time, yet rarely is a guild banned for it. Nice way to dodge my argument though.
Difference is, you have used deliberately something that was intended to be used deliberately - class abilities, raid composition.
Layering is something that was supposed to happen in the background, not something that was intended to be deliberately manipulated.
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