World of Warcraft: Classic Onyxia artwork

[Update]: Blizzard is now getting ready to entirely remove the layering system.

In order to avoid having half-empty servers later on, as well as to combat the initially massive influx of players, Blizzard implemented a layering system for World of Warcraft: Classic. Essentially, it's like having mini-servers within each server.

While the layering system has done its job admirably by making WoW Classic actually playable during its launch week, there have been a couple of problems as well. Most notably, some players have been using layering to search for rare monsters and loot, potentially doubling or even tripling the amount of items they'd normally be able to farm.

In an effort to address this problem, as well as to clean up some of the misconceptions about layering, Blizzard has now released a small developer update discussing the whole system. Long story short, the problem is a lot smaller than what people are claiming, though Blizzard is working on adding new layering restrictions.

"We’ve been monitoring players’ use of layers, and we agree that we should add a delay between subsequent layer transfers," reads the brief blog post. "Under the hood we have all the controls I talked about in the Reddit AMA before launch, a few secret weapons we haven’t discussed publicly, and we’re working on deploying some additional controls to further restrain layering from being exploitable."

"However, we also want to assure you that the issue is a much smaller problem than some people are claiming. We’ve been closely monitoring the effect layering is having on economies and other aspects of the game, and many of the stories we see posted are wildly inaccurate. We’ve seen screenshots of banks full of rare crafting materials, which we’ve investigated and proved false."

"Rest assured that there are not people running around with banks full of (Thorium) Arcane Crystals or Black Lotus."

Whatever the case may be, the good news is that layering won't stick around for long. According to Blizzard, it will be going away as soon as Phase 2 appears alongside Dire Maul, the honor system and PvP rank rewards, as well as the two world bosses Azuregos and Kazzak. When exactly that will happen, nobody currently knows, but I'd imagine it's going to be a month or two from now.

You can read the full developer update over at the WoW Classic forums.