In the ongoing fight against the rampant overpopulation issues in World of Warcraft: Classic, Blizzard has had to retreat to an old solution as they search for a way to apply a more permanent fix.
Due to extended queues and other complications raised by the overpopulation, Blizzard has reimplemented layering for two of their most overpopulated realms. Arugal and Faerlina will both have layering implemented once again.
With layering enabled, players are essentially split onto two different, separate instances of the same realm. This alleviates the issue of overpopulation by allowing the same number of players to be split amongst two groups instead of all trying to fit into a single layer.
However, the technique is far from without issue, as separating players means that players aren’t able to see or interact with each other unless added to a group together. This can have massively negative repercussions on the community, as they’re essentially taken away from each other.
It also provides an easy system to abuse as players jump layers to cause complications for each other, whether it be taking someone’s mobs before phasing away or some other obnoxious technique. In the same vein, it can be easy for some players to manipulate layering for farming purposes.
The player base of World of Warcraft: Classic has been incredibly against the concept of layering for the most part, though it does provide a decent and seemingly-simple fix to the rampant overpopulation issues.
Primarily, most players seem against it for the simple fact of it not having been in Vanilla WoW, which is what Classic is meant to replicate perfectly. However, there are multiple other more practical issues that leave players frustrated with the system.
To make matters worse, Blizzard has been repeatedly fluctuating between removing and implementing layering, especially for the highest population realms. Rather than leaving layering until the problem is fixed, Blizzard has been frequently putting in and taking out the layering method.
This makes it so that players have difficulty knowing if they should adapt to layering or not, as it tends to be taken out as soon as the issue abates a bit. Once players adjust to one style, Blizzard adjusts to the other, making it unpredictable and annoying at best.
Still, it provides a fix that makes it so that players can actually sign on to play the game that they pay for, so it’s understandable as a last resort if nothing else. As time goes on, Blizzard will hopefully find a way to fix the problem for good.
