Yea, layering is definitely immersion breaking. It was blasted endlessly on reddit and other forums, but blizzard insists that it's necessary.

Even now we can see just how poorly implemented this was, despite all the bug reports of layer abuse that happened during the beta. To get a better understanding of how little blizzard expected of vanilla, look no further than 2 weeks before release. There were 3 servers to choose from for NA alone.

Yea, no shit we'll need layering with so few servers. Then the day of release you see they release like 20+ more servers to meet the demand. And there are still queue times.

Layerings problems span more than just immersion breaking and layer hoping. People have found out that they can reset raid bosses by layer hoping. They've been farming insane amounts of gear that normally you'd have to wait weeks to farm. Luckily, blizz finally responded to this and said they're going to fix the "bug" and ban people who were exploiting this. But a lot of people are saying the damage is done, unless blizz some how deletes literally every piece of gear and gold that came as a result of this exploit.

But I'm right there with you man. It sucks seeing in guild chat people asking for layer hops and all that. And it's also sad that private servers were able to more faithfully recreate the vanilla "experience".

I don't mind very much. And I don't think most players do either. I'm not sure why people are always setting themselves on fire over it.

If you don't mind it you should.
Here's one extremely game breaking way to exploit layering:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eb9R0GSAzY
Layering was a mistake from the start and now we're starting to truly see how big the fuck up has been.

All the player skeletons and bodies not being there.

Not disagreeing with you about layers, but the lack of skeletals is also due to a different change blizzard made. Each player only leaves a single skeleton now, and old ones despawn when you die. They were afraid of people writing things on the ground with skeletons. You're not going to see huge amounts of skeletons even after layering goes away.

Blizzard needed to choose a system that would help with the launch load. Layering was one of the options. Layering was clearly the worst option. They chose it anyways. Even now, we have many players who shrug and support it... These are typically the same players who are not manipulating and abusing it. As one of the guys who has become pretty good at violating layering, I hate layering SO much... All the guys I know who abuse this system every play session, feel the exact same way; it was unnecessary and that there were better options available. I was pointing out flaws with this system months and months ago as an ignorant outsider that hadnt even tested the system... And most of the bugs I predicted made it through along with a whole host of new bugs that I had not predicted. The system is inherently flawed and is designed in a way that is easy to abuse.

A layered world where players can trigger phasing when they wish with a simple invite - obviously this is not going to end well.

Cannot wait for this system to be gone.
I said when it was announced it could be exploited and would have unintended consequences. The instance bug alone is huge

I don't like layering but it does help us somewhat. Imagine having to fight for mobs. It would take forever to grind/quest. Yes, the exploiting is a bit much but layering does benefit us in some ways.

I don't like layering but it does help us somewhat. Imagine having to fight for mobs. It would take forever to grind/quest. Yes, the exploiting is a bit much but layering does benefit us in some ways.

Yea, can you imagine? Gosh... If we had to interact with a bunch of other people in a massive world... Yucky. What if we had to... Fight... For resources or control of quest hubs instead of using layering to avoid war in Warcraft? That would be just terrible. All of this forced interaction causing tension and adversity that players would have to face together. A harsh world where you are incentivized to interact with others in an effort to survive and thrive? Yuck, yuck, yuck! So glad we have layering as a get-out-of-jail-free card whenever we want a shortcut. So glad I could seamlessly surf my way across layers all the way to 60 to avoid all conflict and then turn around and cash in on that same system while farming devilsaur skins. Yay layering! /s

Stfupepercut you can’t fight with your own faction. And you can’t complete quests in raids. (Also aren’t you the guy that abused layering with the dungeon exploit?)

It’s here and it’s a game. No way to avoid it except going back to pservers. Just enjoy the experience for what it is, a recreation of WoW vanilla, and take a break from the negativity circle jerk.

Transfered to a low population server. There's never enough people to create more than one layer. Plus there is no one running any end game content yet.

So this whole layering exploit hasn't touched this realm. Especially considering the population is so low, the AH barely functions past Lvl20. If you got anything worth selling, you wouldn't, atleast for awhile.

I know it's a pain in the ass and it's a cop out for Blizzard. But if layering is a huge problem I suggest rerolling on one of the several new realms. The ones that were made to address the queue problem(that didn't...). Or wait and see if they open free transfers once again.

If you don't mind it you should.
Here's one extremely game breaking way to exploit layering:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eb9R0GSAzY
Layering was a mistake from the start and now we're starting to truly see how big the fuck up has been.

This guy is all over the map about the economy and has some weird impression that items ought be set at a certain price and thats it.
He also fails to understand that a reduction in price is a win for consumers. He complains things are too cheap then cries about some prediction people will hoard things and increase the prices. Buying and selling items arent for you to intervene and decide who gets what, the quantity of what and for you to decide the cost or price.

World of Warcrafts "economy" is a terrible economy even without layers. Its just part of the game.

Imagine thinking the game would have been playable without layering. Without layering, we'd all still be level 25 at this point. It'll be fun when it's removed though.

Imagine thinking the game would have been playable without layering. Without layering, we'd all still be level 25 at this point. It'll be fun when it's removed though.

Well, the alternative wouldn't be the current server populations without layering.

Layering enabled megaservers with tens of thousands of players. In a world without layering, and without any other population phasing technology of some sort, there would be no megaservers in classic.

I'm not saying layering is good, or that megaservers are good. But comparing layering to a server of the same size without layering isn't realistic. A single server with say 40,000 players online at the same time was never an option.

Imagine thinking the game would have been playable without layering. Without layering, we'd all still be level 25 at this point. It'll be fun when it's removed though.

Imagine creating enough servers to accomodate all players at launch without layering. Oh wait- small indie company

Most people want to play on the big servers because of the healthy auction house, more guilds and people to play with together, faster instances and other bits that makes bigger realms better...

I prefer a realm that doesn't have queues and has a 10% max difference in faction sizes. I hate when horde is 30% more than alliance. Breaks the world PvP.

Imagine thinking the game would have been playable without layering. Without layering, we'd all still be level 25 at this point. It'll be fun when it's removed though.

Huh? There were plenty of other options... ... .... .............. Havent you been following any of the discussions about layering?

Personally, I think layering was a very good option. The population has died down enough, and people have gone deep enough into progressing their main characters, to soon safely remove layering before phase 2. Sure, one may cry left and right about Blizzard's s choices. But while you do so, I'll just cherish the fact that they gave us the game we wanted, and have some fun playing it.

Edit:

Layering enabled megaservers with tens of thousands of players. In a world without layering, and without any other population phasing technology of some sort, there would be no megaservers in classic.

Good. I love it. I love the megaservers. I want precisely that.
Besides -- and know you in specific might not be making this argument, Pippina -- these megaservers don't disconnect the feeling of a tightly-knit community. I recognize players from low levels. I recognize enemies. I have my notepad with KoS list, and I have gotten revenge plenty of times. I know all the guilds.

Megaservers and layering was good for vanilla WoW, at least that's what I think.

Here we go again :smile:

Layering exists, but it wont forever. It's not going to change for an alternate system, it will be removed. Accept it, or exploit it, and move on.

Here we go again :smile:

Layering exists, but it wont forever. It's not going to change for an alternate system, it will be removed. Accept it, or exploit it, and move on.

Thats nice, now back to the conversation - OP feels like layering "kills the feel", and I couldnt agree more! Why do people try to snuff out conversations that they dont want to participate in... You like layering Selexin, thats great, a lot of us dont; we're having a discussion about that. I just feel like its such a childish response to a thread that has some good discussion. We talked about layering prelaunch. I outlined many of the issues we're seeing. You argued until you were blue in the face and disagreed with my prediction that layering would be easy to abuse and very profitable, you were incorrect. We can both agree that layering exists and will continue to exist until it is removed, I believe I stated that immediately after it was announced. Just because layering exists doesnt mean we cant criticize it or talk about how its ruining our experience though.

Its okay for us to like different things... Its okay that youre casual... Its okay that you dont understand how layering is impacting your experience or are intentionally turning a blind eye to its impacts. Ignorance is bliss and I wish I was as uninformed about layering as you are. Believe me, I genuinely do.

It really sucks that I heard what layering was and predicted exactly what it would become. It sucks that I was right. It sucks that I abused it a ton to gain an equal playing field. It sucks that phase 1 is worse than it would have been.