How does the new `shard` system work?

[goblingirl]

I play on a very very populated server that is 95% alliance. I am alliance. Guess what happens at all the invasions? Its 3-5 Alliance and 100+ horde. I havent been able to tag a mob without getting blasted by 50+ horde since the invasions started. Its a shit system, that needs to be fixed. I wouldn't care if it was evenly distributed, but its obviously just shoving players into random shards.

Honestly, the days of a healthy playing field on pvp servers in WoW are long, long past. The players themselves congregated on specific servers so their faction would outnumber the other faction, and then yes inviting more people in via CRZ tech just makes it worse. There has been no real world PvP in almost a decade, it's been a one-sided gankfest for many years now.

I finally just paid the money and moved my horde PvP toon to Area 52. I looked around during WoD and the only world pvp was gankers doing stupid shit like camping the zone-out spot for the garrisons and such.

So now, I have the benefit of a large server pop and a busy AH, freedom to quest, and I just limit my PvP to battlegrounds/arenas. Frankly I was limited to battlegrounds and arenas before anyway, because again, there was never any real world PvP to be found anymore. Literally all I gave up by moving the toon was dealing with all the ganking crap.

[goblingirl]

Are the "shards" cross-realm for legion, or will legion be own realm only (with old content as cross-realm shards)? Really curious, cause fuck blizzard if the former, though I haven't read definitely anywhere to suggest either concretely.

Nobody knows yet, because there weren't a bunch of beta servers in the way that production servers exist. We won't know until the 30th.

[Raiju]

They want it on their terms.
Plenty of people when they need them for content, but not when they don't want competition.
Hypocrites.

There's NOTHING hypocritical about only wanting CRZ to be group based rather than forced.

[4dahorde]

The main problem with crz is leveling. When you level up you want it to happen as fast as possible. With crz you stand and wait the same amount of time it took you from 1-xx before crz. Shit takes forever now, waiting on respawns. But glowpipe, they added multitap targets now. Wrong. Yes its there and if you are lucky you can get a tap on long spawn quest boss. Problem here is that everyone and their mother have heirloom gear and onesthot every single mob. On my monk i take everything in 2 globals or less at lvl 74.

Make everything insta respawn and maybe crz would be bearable.

Some people, like myself do NOT like to do things in WoW as fast as possible. It is a game, I enjoy the game, and what it takes to do things. I can see how someone who likes to speed ass through things and then complain there is nothing to do would not like CRZ for this reason though. However...is it REALLY that big a time loss???? New zones that are crowded are the same way as you are stating here. Lots of people, waiting on spawns..what does CRZ cause that a new expansion does not???

This is an MMO..that is multiplayer. The world is SUPPOSE to feel full and alive. Basically you are saying you hate CRZ because you don't want to see other people and have eveything to yourself? I am seriously trying to understand what the massive hate it is for this feature. Why do people also see the need to blaze through shit as fast as fucking possible? Isn't the point of a game to PLAY the game. What happens when you rush through stuff, don't you eventually run out of stuff to do? Are you the type of person who then complains that Blizzard sucks because there is nothing to do for your subscription.

I don't understand alot of the reason people give for not liking things in WoW...but this is really one I will likely never understand. it really is NOT that bad. Try slowing down and enjoying the things around you...an MMO is not designed for instant gratification.

[MrExcelion]

Honestly, the days of a healthy playing field on pvp servers in WoW are long, long past. The players themselves congregated on specific servers so their faction would outnumber the other faction, and then yes inviting more people in via CRZ tech just makes it worse. There has been no real world PvP in almost a decade, it's been a one-sided gankfest for many years now.

I finally just paid the money and moved my horde PvP toon to Area 52. I looked around during WoD and the only world pvp was gankers doing stupid shit like camping the zone-out spot for the garrisons and such.

So now, I have the benefit of a large server pop and a busy AH, freedom to quest, and I just limit my PvP to battlegrounds/arenas. Frankly I was limited to battlegrounds and arenas before anyway, because again, there was never any real world PvP to be found anymore. Literally all I gave up by moving the toon was dealing with all the ganking crap.

I'm thinking that since ganking is a thing again, others might take the plunge and pay for a transfer back to PVE too

Curious to know if this shard tech will be used for Legion zones or if this is just for legacy zones. It'll definitely be annoying to deal with ganking without flying and needing to get my world quests done. The QQ is going to be intense if certain sides can't get their quests done due to the PVP (since one side will greatly outnumber the other). It's one thing to just AFK in the air on a flying mount for the invasions but I could see immense backlash if they do it for Legion zones

[dyzz]

Honestly, the days of a healthy playing field on pvp servers in WoW are long, long past. The players themselves congregated on specific servers so their faction would outnumber the other faction, and then yes inviting more people in via CRZ tech just makes it worse. There has been no real world PvP in almost a decade, it's been a one-sided gankfest for many years now.

I finally just paid the money and moved my horde PvP toon to Area 52. I looked around during WoD and the only world pvp was gankers doing stupid shit like camping the zone-out spot for the garrisons and such.

So now, I have the benefit of a large server pop and a busy AH, freedom to quest, and I just limit my PvP to battlegrounds/arenas. Frankly I was limited to battlegrounds and arenas before anyway, because again, there was never any real world PvP to be found anymore. Literally all I gave up by moving the toon was dealing with all the ganking crap.

I did the same thing to avoid the crazy unbalancing being more than an annoyance, and because my server was completely dead for horde. Now the CRZ/Sharding has basically made it where I should have not paid the $55 Transfer/Faction Change, because even tho my faction is extremely populated on my home world, every CRZ/Shard i get shoved in, is completely horde dominate.

I went home on lunch and still have not seen an invasion yet on my two characters that was more than 5-10 alliance and 50+ horde.

[glowpipe]

Some people, like myself do NOT like to do things in WoW as fast as possible. It is a game, I enjoy the game, and what it takes to do things. I can see how someone who likes to speed ass through things and then complain there is nothing to do would not like CRZ for this reason though. However...is it REALLY that big a time loss???? New zones that are crowded are the same way as you are stating here. Lots of people, waiting on spawns..what does CRZ cause that a new expansion does not???

This is an MMO..that is multiplayer. The world is SUPPOSE to feel full and alive. Basically you are saying you hate CRZ because you don't want to see other people and have eveything to yourself? I am seriously trying to understand what the massive hate it is for this feature. Why do people also see the need to blaze through shit as fast as fucking possible? Isn't the point of a game to PLAY the game. What happens when you rush through stuff, don't you eventually run out of stuff to do? Are you the type of person who then complains that Blizzard sucks because there is nothing to do for your subscription.

I don't understand alot of the reason people give for not liking things in WoW...but this is really one I will likely never understand. it really is NOT that bad. Try slowing down and enjoying the things around you...an MMO is not designed for instant gratification.

Easy put. Instagibbing multiple mobs. There is always things to fight in new expansion cause people can't over pull and it takes time to kill stuff. Now in legion this becomes even better with the multi tag system. In lower lvl zones people run around oneshotting everything. You have no time what so ever to multitap. As a melee you are simply effed if there is a hunter around. Ive gone from 71 to 75 today on my monk. Spent most of the time ive been online waiting on mobs to respawn. Its not fun at all. And leveling is just an annoyance you need to go through. the real game starts at max level.

[ComputerNerd]

There's NOTHING hypocritical about only wanting CRZ to be group based rather than forced.

Yet that is not the bulk of the CRZ complaints.
The majority are "they are stealing my things".
They want the population when they want to pug, but not when they have competition out in the world.
You can't have it both ways.

[huth]

I'm thinking that since ganking is a thing again, others might take the plunge and pay for a transfer back to PVE too

Curious to know if this shard tech will be used for Legion zones or if this is just for legacy zones. It'll definitely be annoying to deal with ganking without flying and needing to get my world quests done. The QQ is going to be intense if certain sides can't get their quests done due to the PVP (since one side will greatly outnumber the other). It's one thing to just AFK in the air on a flying mount for the invasions but I could see immense backlash if they do it for Legion zones

Sharding is primarily for new content. You're rarely going to run into the issue it is meant to deal with(i.e. overcrowding) in old content.
So disabling it for new content would be nonsensical.

[goblingirl]

This is what I'm worried about. I fucking swear if blizz shards Legion with all realms...

I keep defending blizzard, but I'll be done then.

I really hope they don't shard current content zones. I don't play on RP servers, but I really DO like to see people from my realm while I'm playing. I like seeing the other big guilds running around, etc. We're recognize each other.

I've had a taste of this shard stuff with the Stormwind change... now when I go to Stormwind I generally don't see anyone from my realm. It's truly a city of strangers. Honestly, if they are trying to take the route of "one big game world where you can play with anyone from anywhere", then they need to remove the trade restrictions, for example. This halfway stuff - you can see all these people, but never share more than kill credit with them, basically - isn't good.

[nazrakin]

Im sure the end goal is to eventually have a World of Warcraft where players never have to think about servers. The only real hold outs at this point are Guilds and the AH. At blizzcon they already confirmed that crossrealm guilds are something theyre working on.

[Deleted]

Serious question. Why do people hate on CRZ so much? Your example is almost the exact same thing..on one habd you have CRZ adding more people to zones, on the other hand you have the same number of people as CRZ all the time on your server.

But seriously, what is with all the hate for CRZ? I am constantly seeing complaints on this, and it boggles my mind that people have such a negative view of it.

Many must've said by now, but i hate it because it ruins rare farming. When trying to get a rare mount for example, you are competing with a few thousand people in your server. When it goes CRZ you are competing with every single person on every single server of your region. It makes what was difficult into outright impossible. I can waste hours/days farming a rare spawn knowing that i will likely get it if i can see him spawn. This makes rares already difficult to find. When you throw millions of people on multiple of the shards wich you can not even see but they compete for the same exact spawn, it makes it utterly impossible.

I liked doing these rare spawn campings and eventually beeing rewarded by it. CRZ destroyed that aspect of the game for me. The reward will never come. Part of the game is literally blocked by it. I don't think that is worth beeing able to see one more person during low level questing. Who the eff cares? Most will just level through dungeons or pvp anyways. It also destroys the sense of community from a server as usual. Something Blizz has been ruining for the longest time.

If they cared about rare camping they would decrease the spawn timers in a proportionate ammount to the number of people. But ofc, they don't very much care that they made the difficult, impossible. So, now its get your rares during the current expansion or lose them forever.

I'm with the other guy that said to just make mega servers/merge realms. That would be much much better. Nowadays i don't even know what the point of having servers even is anymore.

Heck, if they ever did those pristine realms i would be all over it.

[Spotnick]

the only real reasons to hate CRZ is for rare farming, resource farming, and this one CAN be big.... pvp servers.

and well... questing from time to time. waiting for respawns can be annoying.

They fixed all that with multi-tap for all resources.

It's even easier now to farm rares... make a raid and cover all the places.

[Shauren]

Are the "shards" cross-realm for legion, or will legion be own realm only (with old content as cross-realm shards)? Really curious, cause fuck blizzard if the former, though I haven't read definitely anywhere to suggest either concretely.

Probably not cross realm in legion content

Btw this tech is not new at all, this is the thing blizz activated ~1 week after WoD launch to fix the horrible lag

[Delaios]

Would the new system be responsible for the short freezes when switching zones. I've always suffered from those, but they went from barely noticeable to ones lasting for well over a second.

[goblingirl]

Would the new system be responsible for the short freezes when switching zones. I've always suffered from those, but they went from barely noticeable to ones lasting for well over a second.

Yes. It's also the jacked up hover-for-15-seconds that you encounter at the end of a flight point, waiting for the dismount so you can get on with your day.

[Nzete]

A group finder that allows you to make pugs with people from other realms does not mean that every single person on the NA servers in Storm Peaks has to be in the same instance of Storm Peaks.

Having other people around in the multi-tag everyone sharded together means that mobs have ~5% less HP but give 50% less experience. Good for the leecher, not for the person who has threat and has to finish killing the mob. And if they don't loot it, you can't skin it even if you did 95% of the damage. You can't trade with them. Any gathering that they get, you don't with no potential to buy it on AH. They are just a loss of resources and not really helpful.

I don't get any jollies from seeing someone from another realm just for the sake of them being there. The wilds are for adventurers; you will see more people in cites. Some areas are abandoned; it adds to their feel. It would just be strange to see a load of people in the wilds of Netherstorm.