"If you want to avoid CRZ and sharding, maybe check out an RP realm."

[WowIsDead64]

I am a dev, I am working on software other than games now, but still pretty close to the industry and have former colleagues / friends who work on games.

If you work in game dev, presumably you know how to separate chaff from wheat in what is getting said, so please read the Holinka interview again and show me what his team did in the past few months. What is it???

(He doesn't want to talk about what the team did because the point of the interview was something else? First, that's BS, everybody who gives interviews is dying to tell what his team did - if he has something to say that is. Second, and what was the point of the interview? To tell "we might or might not do it" about twenty things???)

Sum total, I see three tiny things they did / plan to do that, taken together, amount to less than one dev-day (and that's being generous). That's it. The rest is that amorphous "taking care of things" which can not be measured and has no success criteria.

Saying something like "And I'm British Queen" or "And I'm Japanese pilot" would be enough.

P.S. CAD dev, whose hobby was gamedev in past, here. So many devs in one thread?

[Teri]

Yeah CRZ is the biggest concern for me, I've always seen it was a way for Blizzard to ignore the low pop realms and the condition they're in. Holinka just added fuel to the fire with his idiotic comment about CRZ/Sharding and the RP realms, it literally makes me think there's no meaningful changes coming to low pop realms any time soon.

But it's easy for you isn't it? Sitting on one of the highest pop realms in Europe, I never asked for my realm to decline heavily from Lich King onwards nor should I be expected to fork out real money to transfer my characters to be a more populated realm, which is exactly what they want.

The reality of it is CRZ is to save them money on realm costs, it benefits them, not those of us on low pop realms in the slightest, they said we'd get connection at Blizzcon last year (J Allen Brack) said it and we're still waiting but hey, that's okay right? You're on a high pop so who cares?

Same here, my realm was fine during TBC to Half MoP, when I quit for 3 years, came back to find my server in this state.

Yes I came back in September, and did not look at populations back then, but rerolling wasn't in my mind of "coming back".

November 2016 blizzcon QA they said they wanted to connect more realms, it's been 4 months now, no news and I am still waiting for at least something before spending money/bnet balance blindly.

What if suddenly after transfering they suddenly connect my current realm to others?

With EU token gold prices still rising over time (184k), it doesn't really get better outlook on transfer potential.

While US tokens stayed at 90k for a month or so (*jealous*), EU ones went up 10-20k.

[WowIsDead64]

Depends, do you actually care about RPing or are you another one trying to flee CRZ? If you intend to RP, Argent Dawn, if you intend to quest and level then any of the others (DMF, ER, SWC, ect)

Both. I'm semi-RP player. I.e. I don't RP like making story for my character, talking with other players some special way, sitting in alehouse. RPing for me - is living in game. I.e. imagining, that what happens in game - is real. And I think it's real RPing - not some stupid "RP rules".

[bloodmoth13]

Whats peoples problems with CRZ and sharding?

[Teri]

Whats peoples problems with CRZ and sharding?

The fact that blizzard seems to treat it as a fix for lower pop realms, thus not getting a REAL solution.

And this isn't even about PvP at all, as PvE realms are also affected.

Cross-realm content is widely available, no problem there.

Guilds are server-only. Big difference.

Can't help people in cities that ask for guilds or tradeskill or gold or whatever if they aren't from your realm group, or can't join their guilds either.

[WowIsDead64]

Whats peoples problems with CRZ and sharding?

Overcrowding by players, you can't interact with + faction balance. 7.5K and 9K players on my servers. But just 2.5K Horde. Total population of Alliance on CRZed realms - around 30K. It's like on top single-factioned servers, I would want to avoid. Total population of Horde - around 20K, but Horde is much less active in outdoor content. Overall situation - I see crowds of Alliance players in outdoor content and almost no Horde. It's even worse, than single player. Yeah, you're alone either, but at least in single player game nobody prevents you from playing normally - you don't have to compete with "NPCs" for game resources.

P.S. And all sub-5000K servers are merged - this is right solution of problem. Here is the plan: 1) Implement new "namespaces" for existing realms - i.e. make new reams, merged with other servers (tech is already in game - realms are essentially being run on the same hardware, play players are able to keep their chracter/guild names) 2) Open free realm transfers from small realms to this new "Namespace" realms 3) Merge realms, that become dead 4) Constantly keep free realm transfers from dying and overpopulated realms to medium ones.

Problem solved.

Problem is - Blizzard not longer want to provide free realm transfers. They want to milk paid service money from you.

[Deleted]

I loved that about RP realms ever since CRZ was implemented. Got TLPD, Aeonaxx, camel, sea horse on RP realms.

But its wrong. CRZ should have never been implemented in first place. Devs don't care about community, not on non-RP servers (by implementing sharding/CRZ), not on RP servers (by telling non-RPers to move to RP). They are the assholes. They care only about money, including saving costs on server hardware, which is why CRZ was added.

[Lochton]

Anyone else catch this gem from the latest Q A?

For those unaware, not only are RP servers CRZed and sharded, its been outright interfering with players ability to RP.

Its also a dev telling none-RPers to go to a RP server so they can go and not RP.

Bullshit advice, we have it on RP servers too. And don't really fancy an overflow of non-RP'ers, has killed some RP servers before..

- - - Updated - - -

I loved that about RP realms ever since CRZ was implemented. Got TLPD, Aeonaxx, camel, sea horse on RP realms.

But its wrong. CRZ should have never been implemented in first place. Devs don't care about community, not on non-RP servers (by implementing sharding/CRZ), not on RP servers (by telling non-RPers to move to RP). They are the assholes. They care only about money, including saving costs on server hardware, which is why CRZ was added.

No no, CRZ was a good idea, especially with the other RP servers. It is sharding that shouldn't have happened.

[bloodmoth13]

Overcrowding by players, you can't interact with + faction balance. 7.5K and 9K players on my servers. But just 2.5K Horde. Total population of Alliance on CRZed realms - around 30K. It's like on top single-factioned servers, I would want to avoid. Total population of Horde - around 20K, but Horde is much less active in outdoor content. Overall situation - I see crowds of Alliance players in outdoor content and almost no Horde. It's even worse, than single player. Yeah, you're alone either, but at least in single player game nobody prevents you from playing normally - you don't have to compete with "NPCs" for game resources.

P.S. And all sub-5000K servers are merged - this is right solution of problem. Here is the plan: 1) Implement new "namespaces" for existing realms - i.e. make new reams, merged with other servers (tech is already in game - realms are essentially being run on the same hardware, play players are able to keep their chracter/guild names) 2) Open free realm transfers from small realms to this new "Namespace" realms 3) Merge realms, that become dead 4) Constantly keep free realm transfers from dying and overpopulated realms to medium ones.

Problem solved.

Problem is - Blizzard not longer want to provide free realm transfers. They want to milk paid service money from you.

Mob tapping and resource nodes are no longer exclusive, so those problems have been addressed unless you are talking about opposite faction tapping.

The game was designed to not have players play solo, so i doubt they want players to have the option to play on dead near private servers.

Dont know if your solution would be worth it, sounds like manual work that blizz would need to spend resources on while CRZ seems much more automatic.

I dunno, i get the faction imbalance problems and the clunky contact issues, but i really dont see these other issues as major problems and i personally think that the benefits outweigh the cons. This game is much more fun when interacting with other players and seeing other people in the world, with multi tap enemies in WoD coming across allied players is actually something positive, if blizz can keep that up and make player interaction a more positive experience in general that would be great

[MiiiMiii]

I hate CRZ and sharding.

I might go to an RPPvP server now. I had no idea they did not get affected by this.

Clearly Blizzard has no intention of removing it from the regular realms.

Will I RP with a passion? Probably not. But I won't break any rules, so I will have to read up on RP realm rules.

I know I used to see RP servers in battlegrounds. Are they now completely on their own, 1 realm community? Or is it just the "phasing" that is working better?

[bloodmoth13]

The fact that blizzard seems to treat it as a fix for lower pop realms, thus not getting a REAL solution.

And this isn't even about PvP at all, as PvE realms are also affected.

Cross-realm content is widely available, no problem there.

Guilds are server-only. Big difference.

Can't help people in cities that ask for guilds or tradeskill or gold or whatever if they aren't from your realm group, or can't join their guilds either.

I dunno, i get pvp can get screwed by crz, but it could be fixed also, i remember that there were incredibly lop-sided servers because players naturally wanted to win, so horde would gravitate to horde friendly servers and vice versa, crz would shove the 2 lopsided realms together to create a much more balanced situation. Its not perfect and probably wont always hit the mark, but i imagine that it does more good than harm in that department.

The guild and trade issues i can understand, i wonder how players would react to cross realm auction houses/guilds/trade? Would that be seen as a solution or a problem?

[Teri]

I dunno, i get the faction imbalance problems and the clunky contact issues, but i really dont see these other issues as major problems and i personally think that the benefits outweigh the cons. This game is much more fun when interacting with other players and seeing other people in the world, with multi tap enemies in WoD coming across allied players is actually something positive, if blizz can keep that up and make player interaction a more positive experience in general that would be great

CRZ by itself works, to populate the world etc, however on some front's it's missing the point.

One hand they want the world feel "alive" other hand I can't guild or trade with whoever I meet.

Guild browser is also hopelessly outdated, so many dead guilds in it, number of members doesn't say much, when a lot are lvl100 or below.

Problem with recruitment on forums is, it's most often mythic raid guilds, also multiple forums and out of date posts.

They keep servers exclusive in terms of AH/Guilds and Mythic raids

Low server population might benefit higher AH prices, but obviously has less guilds.

Mob tapping is fine as is, albeit annoying if your other-faction heavy server gets mostly CRZ with even more opposing factions (most low pve servers are alliance dominated, so even more alliance get CRZed in at times) I do experience this daily, but I still go along with my WQs, bigger named & elite mobs etc are often all-tapped so that works.

We just need something to fix guilds, as they are still only within Connected realms, making it all cross-realm would be complicated (which would also rub heads with server-1st stuff and mythic raiding.
Adding bigger clusters of connected realms could also work but complicated due to most low pop horde pve english servers being with more alliance, faction imbalance will exist.

If they somehow could split each server into 2 halves, horde and alliance, and then shuffle those around, it could balance numbers better (but again a problem will arise due to the shared Horde/Alliance AH these days)

Transfers are often too expensive option to expect mass-migrations, biggest servers will only go bigger.

And this is from a pure PVE perspective, pvp server balance is a different story.

- - - Updated - - -

The guild and trade issues i can understand, i wonder how players would react to cross realm auction houses/guilds/trade? Would that be seen as a solution or a problem?

That's what I mention in this post :P

Somehow splitting realms into 2 sides and reconnect independently could shuffle and balance populations the numbers best but it would bring AH problems or server-1st stuff, and overall be very confusing.

As we seen most servers that are 15000+ on wow progress are 1-sided due to mass migrations I suppose, it's the lower ones (few 100 to 5000ish both sides) that need to be taken care of first.

[Fabinas]

It was me. You' ll never get it. That will teach you to not treat the internet forums as a place for sharing personal information.
But I would release the name if you deleted your account here. Take a pick.

[ItachiZaku]

Should just be like how they did it in SWTOR, having multiple instances/shards is perfectly fine, just have a toggle to switch with a priority to go or a prompt to switch to the one your friends are on. Easy peasy.

[Nevcairiel]

Should just be like how they did it in SWTOR, having multiple instances/shards is perfectly fine, just have a toggle to switch with a priority to go or a prompt to switch to the one your friends are on. Easy peasy.

You can just group up if you want to meet up. It transparently zones you into one shard then. Much more intuitive then manually choosing a shard. That was really annoying in SWTOR in the beginning, you could be in the same group but on different shards, and people that didn't know this mechanic got totally confused.

[ItachiZaku]

You can just group up if you want to meet up. It transparently zones you into one shard then. Much more intuitive then manually choosing a shard. That was really annoying in SWTOR in the beginning, you could be in the same group but on different shards, and people that didn't know this mechanic got totally confused.

It doesn't do that all the time though. Many, many times I join a world boss group and 20% of the group is with me, at the site and the other 80% in another instance. Happens quite a bit. Hell, the last For The Horde I did, we had a hard time getting everyone together in the same instance.

I do agree that SWTOR wasn't very intuitive with their instance switching, but it is similar to people in dungeons or ashran not knowing there is a "teleport out" button on the map.

[Toppy]

He litterally stated, that there is "less CRZ and sharding" happening on RP realms; he never said "there is none on those realms".

They also said they are looking into improving this and the world defense chat on those realms.



Is it? Would you preffer to play on a low-pop realm with nobody around?

He shouldn't be telling none-RPers to roll on RP servers in the first place.

[Deleted]

I really dislike the whole CRZ/sharding thing, so been looking at rolling a toon on an RP server. Not really in to RP myself, but I'm happy to let others get on with it, I play with minimal disruption.

Question is really about RP rules, I don't mind if I'm a mostly solo player on an RP realm (as I main on a much larger server in a guild), but will people get mad if I attack them in World pvp indiscriminately? My main is on a PvE realm, but I'd like to try a RP-PVP server.

[netherflame]

WoW. So they are fucking over RP players these days too.

Color me not surprised by the ineptitude

Going to make a guess here, but I'm willing to bet RP players aren't exactly blizzards cash cows.

[anaxie]

Going to make a guess here, but I'm willing to bet RP players aren't exactly blizzards cash cows.

What about pvpers and the millions that quit. Or mythic raiders? They are fucki ng everyone