Cross-Realm Zones Coming to Beta

Originally Posted by Cipero

So what you are saying is that you were hoping that Blizz was going to force people to roll a certain faction, right? That's a ridiculous thought. What's after that? They are going to tell you what class to play as well? And before faction transfers were allowed the factions were still unbalanced, why do you think they appeared in the first place? Nobody would want to play World of Warcraft if they knew Blizz was going to tell them what faction to roll.

Whatever chat you don't need you can disable, so stop acting like you are defenseless against this onslaught of people talking. Realm transfers are 25 bucks..and should be free if you are moving from a locked server anyway, it's by your own choice that you are somewhere you hate.

Did i say that blizzard should decide what faction people are going to play? No, i did not.
What i expected from "what they said few months ago", was that they were going to change the factions, either merge 1 server with 90% alliance to 1 server with 90% horde, so instead of 2 "small". You would get 1 big server with 50/50. And then merge other servers with that is low populated to 1 server.
That is "fixing the problem".

And people were not forced to play "that" faction in original or vanilla, they simply had a choice, horde or alliance. And my server was 50/50 until faction change where it slowly became horde populated.. And the more horde players, the more alliance players leave the server. You could try and do dailys as alliance in a server with 97% horde, and see how many hours it would take to complete 10 dailys when you are getting killed every 10sec by 20 horde players. Yes you can then say "well dont play on a pvp realm", its not really a pvp realm when its full with horde (they cant attack eachother) and if people want to call 1 alliance vs 20 horde a fair fight then thats fine.

Also, i dont hate my server, and i wont move from it either. I have played on the same server, on the same side (horde) since i started playing in vanilla, and i dont dislike my server, i simply hoped blizzard would FIX the problem they made, by merging servers to get faction balance. Because they are not fixing anything for players, who cant do shit in the world by adding more horde or 0 players to a zone on my server.
I simply wanted to play with alliance players, have some world PvP, have fun and joke around with 2 factions- know your enemys (like it was in vanilla-tbc) that was mainly the reason i played on a PvP realm. But when its 97/3% its more PvE realm.
And as far as i know, most servers are either 90/10 horde or 90/10 alliance, so why not merge, get some new engines. Or you could pay 25 to move to a server that does not excist, or simply pay them 25 for a problem they made and are doing nothing to fix.

There is also another thing that blizzard is doing with advertisment and "love" for 1 faction over the other, that makes people play "that faction". And from where im looking, Horde is Blizzards baby, and Alliance is the step kid they love just half. (have played horde 7 years and im not blind)

Originally Posted by Rorcanna

Lol @ GW2 fans raving.

1. Blizzard might have taken inspiration, yes. Stealing? No, it's not stealing. Even an idiot should be able to figure that one out. That's like saying that James Cameron STOLE from the Smurfs because his characters are blue, or from Pocahontas since it's basically the same theme to the love drama.

2. They've made it better. In GW2 there's a process to be a guest on someone elses server, in WoW it's completely smooth and not even any loading screens.

So yeah, rage all you like, once again they prove that they have the power to improve features to match the quality of THEIR game and people are as usual free to pick what game to stick with. As long as they don't take inspiration from GW2 combat, pve content or art style I'mma keep an open mind for this.

I don't really understand why GW2 is even part of the conversation... the games are so dissimilar. This is far more like the server phasing system of DC Universe than GW2.

The problem with trying to compare this to GW2 is that for GW2, separate servers are an integral part of the gameplay due to its PvP system, whereas in WoW, separate servers are a result of simply needing to limit populations due to old hardware and software limitations.

Originally Posted by Herecius

I don't really understand why GW2 is even part of the conversation... the games are so dissimilar. This is far more like the server phasing system of DC Universe than GW2.

Yeah was my first thought as well. Its just the way DCU does it only on a much smaller scale. This is absolutely nothing like GW2. My second thought was why bother? Its a total waste of time to implement this just to avoid merging realms.

Originally Posted by Moomurr

Yeah was my first thought as well. Its just the way DCU does it only on a much smaller scale. This is absolutely nothing like GW2. My second thought was why bother? Its a total waste of time to implement this just to avoid merging realms.

DC:U is much smaller for sure, but it's almost exactly the same principle, phasing seamlessly between servers. The difference is that because DC:U launched with that feature, they were able to never have separate servers in the first place, which is the obstacle Blizz faces - they have to overcome their own, outdated design now.

I've got plenty of confidence in Blizzard, however; I'm pretty sure they can come up with even moer elegant solutions for overcoming server architecture.

Originally Posted by Moomurr

Yeah was my first thought as well. Its just the way DCU does it only on a much smaller scale. This is absolutely nothing like GW2. My second thought was why bother? Its a total waste of time to implement this just to avoid merging realms.

We do not know what they have planned for the future. This could very well be the first step to get rid of realms altogether. Whether it's a step in a longterm plan or not, this is a monumental technological achievement when you think of how old the game is. This can't have been easy to code.

This gives the benefit of merged servers with out the drawbacks.. What's not to like.

Originally Posted by Herecius

I don't really understand why GW2 is even part of the conversation... the games are so dissimilar. This is far more like the server phasing system of DC Universe than GW2.

The problem with trying to compare this to GW2 is that for GW2, separate servers are an integral part of the gameplay due to its PvP system, whereas in WoW, separate servers are a result of simply needing to limit populations due to old hardware and software limitations.

Well to be frank neither do I, but it's still fun seeing people rage over it as if somehow GW2 was this holy entity that's above everything, even other games taking inspiration from it and them taking inspiration from other games.

Great feature in theory, I'm waiting to see though how it turns out in reality. Tbf on 2 of my servers there's been a lot of activity in low level zones the past weeks. New players, many on SoR or RaF/Trial etc etc so perhaps when it goes live it won't even affect my servers.

Originally Posted by Rorcanna

Lol @ GW2 fans raving.

2. They've made it better. In GW2 there's a process to be a guest on someone elses server, in WoW it's completely smooth and not even any loading screens.

So yeah, rage all you like, once again they prove that they have the power to improve features to match the quality of THEIR game and people are as usual free to pick what game to stick with. As long as they don't take inspiration from GW2 combat, pve content or art style I'mma keep an open mind for this.

Well that was a mature response. How do you even know that WoW is going to do it better than GW2? Have you tested it? Right now you just sound like a 12 year old that thinks he was proven right while no proof has been presented.
And we should be happy that WoW is taking things from other games, because that means it'll be a tighter competition, and competition = urge to beat the other company = a better product. So i say, let them take all the things they want, the better they make WoW, the more gamers are going to cash in on it as other games has to live up to its standards.

Originally Posted by Herecius

DC:U is much smaller for sure, but it's almost exactly the same principle, phasing seamlessly between servers.

Indeed. What i was meaning is that what wow is doing was on a much smaller scale than DC.

This sounds amazingly cool. Possibly one of the best features ever. Props to Blizz for once again taking inspiration from other games, and making that feature even better.

Originally Posted by Moomurr

Indeed. What i was meaning is that what wow is doing was on a much smaller scale than DC.

Ah yeah, I misunderstood.

Yeah, this is a great feature to be sure, and no doubt a REALLY impressive feat of coding on Blizz's end, but I'm very hesitant to say it's better than other games that are similar (again, DCU does seamless servers better in my opinion, but that game was built from the ground up for it). As it currently is, this is a very limited feature. The player doesn't have very much control over its use and implementation, it's all automated, and to be totally honest, there aren't very many gameplay features beyond just wanting populated zones for it to even be worth implementing.

My hope is that it's a first baby step towards getting to that sort of totally seamless server experience.

Originally Posted by Wolven Descent

Well that was a mature response. How do you even know that WoW is going to do it better than GW2? Have you tested it? Right now you just sound like a 12 year old that thinks he was proven right while no proof has been presented.
And we should be happy that WoW is taking things from other games, because that means it'll be a tighter competition, and competition = urge to beat the other company = a better product. So i say, let them take all the things they want, the better they make WoW, the more gamers are going to cash in on it as other games has to live up to its standards.

Well I am amused by the angry reactions, not sure how that's determined by age really. How mature is it to write someone off as a 12-year old just to enforce the own point of view? And how original at that? . It's amusing to see people rave also as soon as someone even DARES hint that some other game does something better than GW2, whatever that might be.

The general idea is better (and highly different) that's it. No loading, no UI features to access it and most of all it's made by Blizzard. But as I've said earlier, in theory it sounds promising and only time will tell wether or not it works out, especially seeing how it will have restrictions. But I have faith in Blizzard, for good reason.

This is amazing. Amazing job blizzard. Great move!

Originally Posted by Rorcanna

Well I am amused by the angry reactions, not sure how that's determined by age really. How mature is it to write someone off as a 12-year old just to enforce the own point of view? And how original at that? . It's amusing to see people rave also as soon as someone even DARES hint that some other game does something better than GW2, whatever that might be.

The joke is that it's a two way street.

Look what happens when somebody suggests that another game does something better than Blizzard's game.

This is awesome, nothing less expected from Blizzard anyway.

I don't care where they got the idea from what matters is that they improved it tenfold.

Originally Posted by Herecius

I don't really understand why GW2 is even part of the conversation... the games are so dissimilar. This is far more like the server phasing system of DC Universe than GW2.

The problem with trying to compare this to GW2 is that for GW2, separate servers are an integral part of the gameplay due to its PvP system, whereas in WoW, separate servers are a result of simply needing to limit populations due to old hardware and software limitations.

There are two parts to this technology - grouping people from different realms into one zone instance, and splitting zones into more instance if get too busy.

The second part is more like GW2 or AoC, for example, the first part is different from any game I've played.

GW2 definitely needs multiple realms for the RvRvR aspect in a way that WoW doesn't, but I think it still needs realms for non-technological reasons.

Having 100k people hang around in one instance of SW isn't exactly my idea of fun and if the start instancing it to the extent needed to support that number then you're going to have fun finding anyone without grouping up - this would be worse than AoC was.

But take it a step further and consider guilds - imagine logging in a a newbie and getting bombarded by 10k guilds asking you to join them?

The current realm structure creates a certain level of community - which might falter a bit on low pop and high pop servers but it's be a lot harder to create that with 2 million people on the one realm.

I find this on Eve - I've been in pretty much the same corp since joining a number of years ago at least partially because I have no idea who I would go to. And Eve actually has an advantage here as it has many systems and regions in its universe that allow players to call different bits of it home. So in Eve there is a way to maintain geographically distinct communities in a way that WoW wouldn't have.

Originally Posted by Herecius

The joke is that it's a two way street.

Look what happens when somebody suggests that another game does something better than Blizzard's game.

Tons of games do some stuff better than Blizzard's games tbf, so people angry over that can be put in the same box as the GW2 ravers ;d.

Originally Posted by ct67

There are two parts to this technology - grouping people from different realms into one zone instance, and splitting zones into more instance if get too busy.

The second part is more like GW2 or AoC, for example, the first part is different from any game I've played.

GW2 definitely needs multiple realms for the RvRvR aspect in a way that WoW doesn't, but I think it still needs realms for non-technological reasons.

Most likely; it's developed from the start that way, what with cross-server mail and AH/trading post. The second part you described is definitely similar to GW2's overflow servers, at least in principle, if not application. The big difference in GW2 (and also the difference that makes Blizzard's system and ANet's system hardly even comparable) is that the whole point of the multiple-server transitioning is that you can join multiple guilds on multiple servers and expressly choose to play on whatever server you want. So far with WoW's system, the point is merely to populate low level zones, which is a noble goal, but a far simpler one with totally different intentions. Apples to oranges comparison.

The first part however is exactly like DC:Universe. In DC:Universe, upon logging in, you only choose 'pve' or 'pvp.' There's no realm list to speak of, and in-game, you can switch between PvE and PvP whenever you want. But there's a hidden server architecture beneath that, placing players on different servers and phasing them seamlessly with one another, while also allowing players to group up with players from those other 'hidden' servers all in one zone instance.

Mind you, it looks like WoW is doing it better and taking it a step further, because every zone can be individually and dynamically phased based on the number of players, which is pretty awesome.

---------- Post added 2012-05-11 at 08:13 AM ----------

Originally Posted by Rorcanna

Tons of games do some stuff better than Blizzard's games tbf, so people angry over that can be put in the same box as the GW2 ravers ;d.

Oh I completely agree. I think anybody trying to superficially argue for or denounce another game in this way is just being ridiculous.

God forbid people are allowed to be fond of multiple games at the same time.. I'm like a walking blasphemy machine, I love WoW and D3, and I also love GW2 and Path of Exile at the exact same time. According to some people on this and other forums, I think that qualifies me as eligible for the death penalty.

Originally Posted by Infinitus

This will put the final nail in the coffin of server community. It will be a giant repeat of what LFD did to WoW but on a grander scale.

"I do really wonder when did RL community got a nail in the coffin that nowadays individuals are soo arogant and ignorant of other people across the globe (or a stranger across a street)? With all the technology available to either talk to or get in touch and/or travel half the globe (crossing the street) just to meet him/her "

Yes I am stereotyping, but really? How can people claim community (in game or RL), when individuals are so self enclosed within himself/herself about "perceived community" (mostly family members and close relatives / and best friends) that anytime a stranger ask for anything he is either ignored or ridiculed with "I do not care/retard/n00b" answer? (arrogance)

Really? The exact same mentality is one major cause (of many other) of current global economy crisis!

Why on earth does it matter where Blizzard got the idea from? It is a cool feature and good on them for implementing it in WoW. I hope they continue to take good ideas from other games. (*hint* Dynamic content!)