When World of Warcraft: Classic launched, the absolute key philosophy behind the title was simple: keep it as close to Vanilla as possible. As the months have moved on, this has primarily stayed true to the design. As Retail WoW received perks like double-XP and double-reputation, Classic got no such treatment as the developers continued to add in content in a chronologically accurate way.
Unfortunately, keeping a game so true to Vanilla means that it’s going to have the same flaws that Vanilla had. One of these issues is the problem of overpopulation in a server, which can lead to a drastic number of consequences.
When a server is overpopulated for Classic, just logging on can become an ordeal, as queues of tens of thousands of players stretch to wait times of hours. Once you do log in, a single disconnection throws you back into line again – and this is just one of the many issues.
To fix the issue of overpopulation, one of the things that Blizzard attempted was reintroducing Layering. The Layering mechanic essentially puts the realm on several different layers independent from each other, separating players but allowing for the server to not become so overloaded.
Players, however, generally aren’t a fan of this, if for no other reason than because there wasn’t such a fix in Vanilla. In the quest to keep things as similar to Vanilla as possible, even something that fixes and improves things seems to be unwanted.
However, Blizzard can announce a bit of success in their work to get things under enough control to remove Layering. They’ve announced that the Earthfury realm, one of the more overcrowded servers, has been reduced back down to a single layer.
“A few moments ago, the Earthfury realm was successfully returned to a single layer,” the developers stated via their blog. “This reflects a recent decrease in peak population on that realm, but may lead to occasional, small queues in the evening on Earthfury. We continue to monitor realm populations closely, with an eye on opportunities to bring other layered realms back to the intended single-layer experience.”
It’s fantastic to see the teams making progress, but their work is far from done. Plenty of other servers will need the same treatment, but this success is something to be celebrated, if for no other reason than because now the developers have a solid strategy of what’ll work moving forward in their mission to eliminate layering and get populations under control.
