Layering

Layering is a game design tool to alleviate player overcrowding in outdoor areas. It is effectively the same as sharding, but covers the entire outdoor world of a realm. Layering was used at the launch of World of Warcraft Classic, but was later disabled.

Layering is planned to return for.

At the launch of Classic, players on overcrowded realms were grouped into different "layers". Each layer is a copy of the outdoor world, with minor differences:

• Players can only see other players on the same layer.
• Each layer has its own set of NPCs. As such, rare NPCs may respawn at different times on different layers.
• Each layer has its own set of objects such as herbs and mining nodes.

Players can move to a different layer by joining a party with a party leader on a different layer.

Blizzard originally intended to merge the layers of each realm before Phase 2. This was made effective in 13 November 2019.

• Phasing
• Sharding