Blizzard's sharding and crossrealm technology are a failure

[Deleted]

It has happened to me several times now that while in a group all of a sudden I get moved to a different shard. Mobs around me disappear and others appear. Unfortunately that includes mobs I have already killed and not yet looted. Are you kidding me? You just take my loot away from me? There could have been BOE epics or AP items in it. And now it's gone. It doesn't even get sent to me via the Postmaster. All because Blizzard is unwilling to get better servers for better performance.

Another example is world bosses. Being in a group with 40 people, and even though at least around 30 of them are in the same location, only 6 are actually in the same shard as me? They are unable to even put people in the same shard.

Honestly, not only is the sharding technology a failure, but at this point it's clear that crossrealmplay in general is a failure. It does nothing but destroy server communities, it causes only problems performance-wise, and there is no need for it. All they would have to do in order to assure that people find others to form a group with is to merge smaller servers together. I'm on the highest pop server in my region. I don't need crossserver play. But allowing crossserver play actually makes it harder for people from the same server to play together, because other people are using crossserver tools, therefore there are less people on your own server that are willing to group up with people from their own server.

If your server is dead, transfer away or tell Blizzard to merge servers. But they won't do it cause they know it's a kiss of death for MMOs, because it's admitting that servers are deserted and that players abandoned the game and that it's dying. Names are not a problem, just give players a last name that all characters on their account share, or give every character the option to have a last name. Other MMOs have this and it works perfectly.

[Deleted]

Sharding is an inexcusable mess

[Halicia]

I rarely have issues with the crossrealm tech.

The main problem I have is with the transfer fees.

It poses an arbitrary financial gateway between players and guilds and causes both to end up quitting in larger numbers than had they been able to join each other.

Give every account one free character transfer per week/month. To a non-overpop server & faction.

If you want to go to an overpop server/faction, or more often than the cooldown, or blahblahblah, sure... keep the fee....

But this is one of those situations where apparently its more profitable to provide a substandard experience and lose some customers, than it is to keep those customers but reduce the income sources.

Why is this relevant to the thread ? Because part of "World of Warcraft" is running around the world, and being able to connect with the players you run into and continuing to play with them in the future. You simply cannot due that without paying additional fees the way crossrealm currently works.

[Issalice]

\I'm not sure it's a failure necessarily, launch was insanely smooth. It does need work. My guild and I had an event to award the first two people to get legion flying, they worked their asses off and we got first place the sandstone drake and second place the sky golem. We all grouped and met up and the group ended up in multiple shards.


Finally after trying a few different locations we were all together again in IF. In the end it wasn't a big deal, just a setback but frustrating.

[randomnamegenerator16]

Both crossrealm and sharding tech are perfectly fine and I am glad that this technology is in. Without CRZ older zones would be like a ghost town which isn't the case with CRZ. Both of those have their bugs, sure, but it is to be expected that sometimes it can work wonky. But is it a serious problem? Nah.

[Twdft]

And I personally think the benefits far outweigh the drawbacks.

Dito.

Only thing that is mildly irritating is when the raid at world bosses is split. Not a big deal tho

[darkwarrior42]

I rarely have issues with the crossrealm tech.

The main problem I have is with the transfer fees.

It poses an arbitrary financial gateway between players and guilds and causes both to end up quitting in larger numbers than had they been able to join each other.

Give every account one free character transfer per week/month. To a non-overpop server & faction.

If you want to go to an overpop server/faction, or more often than the cooldown, or blahblahblah, sure... keep the fee....

But this is one of those situations where apparently its more profitable to provide a substandard experience and lose some customers, than it is to keep those customers but reduce the income sources.

Why is this relevant to the thread ? Because part of "World of Warcraft" is running around the world, and being able to connect with the players you run into and continuing to play with them in the future. You simply cannot due that without paying additional fees the way crossrealm currently works.

The mistake you're making is assuming that they care more about the integrity of the world and the community than they do about money.

Did you see their latest investor's call? They're making a ton of their money off of in-game services. Quoted from the front page:

Blizzard's revenues from in-game content grew more than 25% year-over-year, driven by revenues from World of Warcraft in-game content and continued strength of Overwatch customization items.

They have no reason to remove the server transfer fees, not when people still willingly pay them. They have little reason to fix CRZ and sharding, not when these systems can make the world functional while simultaneously providing incentive for players to transfer.

[Count Zero]

It's actually pretty good.

[cparle87]

The problem with cross realm tech is they tried to merge low/med pop realms in the hope that would stabilize them. What they should have done is merge those realms, actually merged them, none of this linked bullshit, into high pop realms and upgraded those servers to deal with the increased load.

And then they'd get a flood of complaints from people and guilds who had duplicate names, having to decide who got to keep the original names and who had to change, and probably more logistical problems. "My guild is called XXXX and we formed in 2005, we should keep the name and make the other one change!" "Nuh uh yours might be older but mine is bigger so yours should have to change!" "Blizz! "Blizz!"

[Deleted]

The only problem I have is that back in the day, when I'm playing an alt and get wtfpwnd by some hotshot 10 levels higher than me, I'd just log my main and camp his ass until he cried. Sharding completely fucks this up.

[Jokerfiend]

It has happened to me several times now that while in a group all of a sudden I get moved to a different shard. Mobs around me disappear and others appear. Unfortunately that includes mobs I have already killed and not yet looted. Are you kidding me? You just take my loot away from me? There could have been BOE epics or AP items in it. And now it's gone. It doesn't even get sent to me via the Postmaster. All because Blizzard is unwilling to get better servers for better performance.

Another example is world bosses. Being in a group with 40 people, and even though at least around 30 of them are in the same location, only 6 are actually in the same shard as me? They are unable to even put people in the same shard.

Honestly, not only is the sharding technology a failure, but at this point it's clear that crossrealmplay in general is a failure. It does nothing but destroy server communities, it causes only problems performance-wise, and there is no need for it. All they would have to do in order to assure that people find others to form a group with is to merge smaller servers together. I'm on the highest pop server in my region. I don't need crossserver play. But allowing crossserver play actually makes it harder for people from the same server to play together, because other people are using crossserver tools, therefore there are less people on your own server that are willing to group up with people from their own server.

If your server is dead, transfer away or tell Blizzard to merge servers. But they won't do it cause they know it's a kiss of death for MMOs, because it's admitting that servers are deserted and that players abandoned the game and that it's dying. Names are not a problem, just give players a last name that all characters on their account share, or give every character the option to have a last name. Other MMOs have this and it works perfectly.

Look, Jaylock, can you just stop with the pointless whine threads? You just can't help but post trite bullshit.

I've played since Vanilla, and I've never run into a Sharding or Crossrealm issue, and I doubt you have either.

[ReD-EyeD]

I damn love sharding.

[Deleted]

Their system is sharing 50/50 a/h so due to failing tagging system it is certainly failing. WoW always sucked with even faction balance on a server.

[SupBrah]

was the latency horrid for anyone else while the Highmountain invasion was going on.

I don't get it... I thought Activision-Blizzard said group finder addons were the problem, but they completely gutted the ability for thos addons to auto create, auto request, and auto join groups. So why would these addons still be causing such latency?

[darklogrus]

Was Pvping the other night in the North eastern part of Stormheim with a few guild mates and we all kept phasing in an out. At 1 time I was all by myself standing right ontop of 2 other people and none of us could see each other. There were even a few times where the game phased me away from my party member.

You see this a lot with gathering professions, come up to an herb or mining node only to have it vanish instantly.

[MoanaLisa]

The problem with cross realm tech is they tried to merge low/med pop realms in the hope that would stabilize them. What they should have done is merge those realms, actually merged them, none of this linked bullshit, into high pop realms and upgraded those servers to deal with the increased load.

Connected realms have nothing to do with sharding or CRZ.

[Kokolums]

Sharding / crossrealm is a disaster and should be ripped from the game. Wow needs an in-game community and these things kill it.

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I offered 5k gold once to the first player to show up on a mechanized lumbar extractor and when they did i couldnt interact with them because they were on a different shard. Its so stupid. You just cant be social in this game.

[Banquetto]

I've only had a single issue with sharding - where a rare mob disappeared before I could kill it. Once. In all of Legion. And I personally think the benefits far outweigh the drawbacks.

Agreed 100%. I have encountered the "raid split on world boss" bug twice, but that's it. The value of allowing people to play together is imho 100x greater than the drawbacks.

[Tharkkun]

Agreed 100%. I have encountered the "raid split on world boss" bug twice, but that's it. The value of allowing people to play together is imho 100x greater than the drawbacks.

That usually means you have people from Oceanic realms mixed win with North American realms. Most of those issues were fixed in Legion.

[ComputerNerd]

Are there issues ?
Yes.

Is it a "failure" on rather narrow criteria while ignoring where it does work.
Not even close.

Sharding / crossrealm is a disaster and should be ripped from the game. Wow needs an in-game community and these things kill it.

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I offered 5k gold once to the first player to show up on a mechanized lumbar extractor and when they did i couldnt interact with them because they were on a different shard. Its so stupid. You just cant be social in this game.

Players killed community.
Look at how despite the whines about realm communities dying, some actually thrived.
So look instead at what those realms did right with community.
You made a request while ignoring quite well known mechanics of sharding, and then blamed the sharding for your mistake.

Being social is a choice.
You choose to do something positive for others without an agenda.
You simply chose one specific approach and your inability to do it does not make the game non-social.