- Author: OrinDac
- Date: October 4, 2019
- Updated: October 7, 2020
- Expansion: WoW Classic
Just yesterday, Community Manager Kaivax gave an update on realms layering on the Blizzard official forums. The Community Manager stated that over the past five years, the dev team has observed the populations of realms and used layering when they felt it was necessary. Kaivax also reaffirmed that all of the realms will be on one layer before the introduction of world bosses and that a great deal of effort and progress has been made by the dev team to do just that.
Let’s hope so! No one wants to spend a half an hour in a queue.
Kaivax explained that because players have leveled up and explored the game world, the dev team has been allowed to accommodate more players per layer, which in turn means that there are fewer layers per realm. Apparently, the last time that a server in this region had fewer than even three layers was in the first week of September and shortly thereafter, almost all realms had reached just two layers – this included high population realms like Faerlina.
This is pretty impressive, if you think about the fact that the game has been out for just over a month and the sheer number of ready players was completely unexpected.
A change was made this week to a number of realms that reached their single layer status as progress has been made and Kaivax said these realms are now permanently locked in as single layer.
- Anathema
- Arcanite Reaper
- Ashkandi
- Azuresong
- Deviate Delight
- Earthfury
- Felstriker
- Heartseeker
- Netherwind
- Old Blanchy
- Remulos
- Smolderweb
- Windseeker
Another forthcoming change is that realms that are operating on more than one layer will indicate as such on the realms selection screen, being marked as “Layered” when they, in fact, are. Players will then only ever see Full/High/Medium/Low markers for single layer realms.
Kaivax assured that the plan is to, over time, move even more realms over to single layer. Free character moves will still be offered and players should take advantage of that service soon, if they wish to avoid long waits to play.
Free character moves is a nice gesture on Blizz’s part and it seems like they are doing everything that they are able to, to get the realms sorted, so that players can enjoy their experience to its fullest. Let’s hope this trend continues.
Over the five weeks since we launched WoW Classic, we’ve continuously monitored realm populations and utilized layering when necessary to handle launch populations. As we’ve said before, we will have all realms on a single layer before introducing world bosses, and a great deal of progress has been made toward that goal.
First and foremost, players have leveled up and spread out around the world. This allowed us to accommodate more players per layer, which means fewer layers required per realm. The last time a server in this region had more than three layers was the first week of September, and almost all realms reached two layers shortly after that. This includes high population realms such as Faerlina, which has had only two layers for three weeks now.
Along the way, some select realms reached their end-state of a single layer, and we locked that in. With a change we made earlier this week, the following WoW Classic realms are now permanently set to one layer:
- Anathema
- Arcanite Reaper
- Ashkandi
- Azuresong
- Deviate Delight
- Earthfury
- Felstriker
- Heartseeker
- Netherwind
- Old Blanchy
- Remulos
- Smolderweb
- Windseeker
Be on the lookout for another change that we will make in the coming days: soon, realms that are operating with more than one layer will indicate that on the realm selection screen. Those realms will say “Layered” in the realm list. Thereafter, you’ll only see the Full/High/Medium/Low markers for realms that are permanently set to one layer.
We plan to move more realms to a single layer over time, and we will continue to offer free character moves to balance populations and manage login queues. In order to avoid queues in the future, we encourage you to use that service as soon as possible.
Thank you very much!
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