The State of Layering

BoochieSmash · 2019-06-13T12:21:34Z

Since layering is a hot topic today I can not help but notice that a large portion of the community still has a poor overall understanding of layering. If you want to take a seat with me and read a little, I'd like to cover layering a bit more in-depth... and use this whole debacle as an excuse to get my issues with Blizzard's handling of the situation off my chest.I'm going to assume you are at least somewhat familiar with layering and not hit you with the cliché of poking a hole through a piece of paper to explain time travel, or in this case drawing a pie chart to explain separate but connected servers.1) Layering is a rework of the CRZ + Sharding system that exists in retailLayering is not a brand new technology. Every bug we are seeing would more accurately be described as vestigial CRZ/Sharding or simply the reality of how layering will work. There is a misleading interpretation of layering going around which has people under the impression that you are not supposed to be able to change your layer. If that was the case then that would be functionally the same as having separate servers and there would be no good reason to have layering. There is no getting around the fact that players will need to be able to change layers to engage with friends and guildies. I assume Blizzard is trying to tweak the system enough to make it justifiably different, at which point calling it new wouldn't be as much of a stretch, but currently it doesn't look like they got very far with that plan.I should note that layering being crz+sharding is technically a theory, as the burden of proof is on me to disprove Blizzard's statement that it is new tech. I would require access to the code for hard evidence; however, the next closest I can get to this code is client throws: "All players in the party must be from the same realm to enter Kalimdor." seems pretty straight forward to me. There are a lot more examples that I'm sure would juxtapose well to retail but I'm not going to bother going full autist looking it all up right now. It also just makes sense that blizzard wouldn't go out of their way to recreate the wheel when layering by definition isn't much different than CRZ in the first place.Point is, when you think about layering, don't think of it as some new system that just needs to have the wrinkles ironed out. It's an old system that a lot of people don't like, that has a lot of problems, and still needs a lot of work to become layering.2) There is an alternative to problem that layering was pitched to solveLayering is supposed to solve the issue of eventual realm mergers after population declines. It's important to remember the alternative sub-realm or multi-realm system to weigh layering against. There's a lot of ways to implement a sub-realm system, but generally anything along the lines of: You pick the server Malygos, you pick sub-realm 1,2, or 3 and each sub-realm functions as a separate realm with name checks run across them with the intent to merge at a later date.Pros: * More Vanilla-Like (almost said blizzlike lol)* Less development time needed* No resource exploits or funny businessCons: * some sub-realms could feel dead at certain times of day when compared to layering keeping things even* streamer sub-realm(s) will have a massive queue compared to layeringYou might notice the cons are not related to the problem that layering was pitched to solve, but I suspect they will ultimately be the reason we see layering anyway.3) Blizzard used content creators to disseminate information about layering in bad faith Blizzard knew that changing the original plan of "sharding in starting zones for a bit" to "layering for most of phase 1" was not going to go over well with the community. In order to blunt the blow they used a portion of that community that had gained the trust of some of it's users to pitch this system favorably. All publicly available information about layering is essentially hidden in videos that a lot of people won't ever bother to watch, which means most information is 2nd or even 3rd hand at this point. It's no wonder there so many different interpretations of layering that have fostered a torpid level of debate around the feature to this day.Something about this whole thing just does not sit well with me. I mean, the actual existence of layering isn't even a big of a deal to me. And no, I don't think the sky is falling or anything excessive like that. I might even enjoy messing around with layering if it's still broken tbh. I just don't like when some company thinks they are slick enough to hoodwink me into buying some bullshit.Anyway, what are your thoughts?

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Selexin

(@selexin)

Prominent Member

Ok dude, I think it's time to move on from this thread, hahaha. That's just hilarious :lol:

/thread

I bid you adieu and look forward to what tomorrow brings :lol:

Our plan to powerlevel you to 60 is working fantastically well!

ReplyQuote

Posted : 26/06/2019 11:18 pm

Stfuppercut

(@stfuppercut)

Noble Member

Our plan to powerlevel you to 60 is working fantastically well!

They wont even see it coming.

ReplyQuote

Posted : 26/06/2019 11:19 pm

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