CRZ Needs to go away.

[Alewen]

Ah yes, it was the beta. Derp.

And as you said yourself, 2 servers. There's no way in hell that can be compared to the 100+ realms that can be combined in a region on live. And populating 100+ realms on a beta is just a logistical nightmare waiting to happen.

And about the starting areas, they were scaled down vastly from beta to live. For the pandaren starting area, they even went as far as to disable CRZ completely. When I levelled my monk out of there a month ago, there was one other guy in the zone, from my own server no less.

Maybe so, but the big bugs were still there. People were being knocked off passenger mounts. This was reported. There were hangups and lag issues when crossing zone borders. This was also reported. So they were aware of these issues, before it went live. So it still makes no sense how it got through QA.

[puppypizza]

As far as I understand you can do dungeons and raids and all that without having to leave the city, I dont understand what shared server zones has to do with that. A lot of people choose to level inside cities as well.

Well, first of all I would have had to make it to level 15, by which point in my previous story, I had already been hit with the CRZ mallet pretty hard. Second of all, it would have taken much longer than a week to outlevel the CRZ areas with just LFD. Quests seem to provide much more experience than running dungeons, and much quicker.

I don't mind leveling in the world. I do mind if there's 10 servers worth of people all trying to do it at the same time.

[Alewen]

Well, first of all I would have had to make it to level 15, by which point in my previous story, I had already been hit with the CRZ mallet pretty hard. Second of all, it would have taken much longer than a week to outlevel the CRZ areas with just LFD. Quests seem to provide much more experience than running dungeons, and much quicker.

I don't mind leveling in the world. I do mind if there's 10 servers worth of people all trying to do it at the same time.

actually when I was leveling my monk, the moment she hit level 15 I started queueing and was literally getting 2-3 levels per dungeon run, and it gradually went down to 1 level a run, then 1 level even 3 runs, and so forth. She never once hit the world quests. Except cataclysm. I managed to get her through that stuff fairly quickly. Of course, I had heirlooms, and the daily monk xp buff.

[Nerraw]

Maybe so, but the big bugs were still there. People were being knocked off passenger mounts. This was reported. There were hangups and lag issues when crossing zone borders. This was also reported. So they were aware of these issues, before it went live. So it still makes no sense how it got through QA.

They've already stated that the current limitations of the tech prevents them from fixing multi-seat mounts. I assume this is due to every person crossing zone borders are switched over to the target realm individually.

As for the lag when switching zones, that is most likely attributed to the fact that your character is moved to another server physically. Only way to eliminate that lag is for either Blizzard to invest in faster hardware and/or players getting better connections. And considering the amount of people Blizzard's hardware has to accomodate, I'd wager that their stuff is some of the best you can get.

I don't mind such things though. I finally see people again when I level my characters. My server is in the bottom 15 in Europe. Prior to CRZ, you'd be lucky to even see 3 level-appropriate people while levelling up. Now the place actually has people. And I can play with friends from other realms when I want to. The negative sides are to me insignificant in comparison to the positives.

[puppypizza]

actually when I was leveling my monk, the moment she hit level 15 I started queueing and was literally getting 2-3 levels per dungeon run, and it gradually went down to 1 level a run, then 1 level even 3 runs, and so forth. She never once hit the world quests. Except cataclysm. I managed to get her through that stuff fairly quickly. Of course, I had heirlooms, and the daily monk xp buff.

Yeah, with the 40% or whatever max buff to XP from heirlooms, plus a daily 50% XP buff, plus maybe the buff that pandas get for rested experience. You may have even had an XP buff from a guild. Leveling would've been smooth like butter.

I did quests because it was either wait 10-15 minutes in an LFD queue, and then possibly another 10-15 to finish it. Or just go collect 10 bear butts, click a few shinies and get almost the same amount of XP. Plus the chance to see some zones I had skipped in Cataclysm. I've already done the LFD dungeons to death. And I figured, surely CRZ isn't that bad...

I did run most of the 1-60 dungeons at least once, just to do the quests they offered as well. But I was noticing things slowing down if I did repeat runs. I didn't do the 50-60 dungeons, or the late-game expansion ones since those are basically at the level you move on to the next expansion anyway.

I'll admit half the reason I leveled the way I did was just to see if it was possible. I remember reading a few posts on this site where people were being called liars for saying they could gear a 90 in a week. I thought, "challenge accepted". The other half was just because warlocks and death knights are the only classes I hadn't leveled. And maybe a teeny bit because of the green fire announcement.

All in all, it took about 2 weeks to finish my char off satisfactorily, though I could have saved a lot of time by ignoring professions and dailies. But I just finished LFR Mogushan Vaults last night, and even got an epic weapon from it. Not too shabby.

[crazy23]

I really have not dealt with it that much, of course I get the usual cross realm lag when entering some zones, or I may even be flagged for PVP, when I join a PVP realm, but that really is not a big deal to me

I have no intentions of levelling another character , so perhaps because I have not been in the early areas/ outlands etc, I have not noticed CRZ as much.


I voted " I don't care" just because I have not seen enough of it to be able to say one way or the other if it is good or bad

EDIT: Strange thing , I forgot. I hang around on my main in Exodar, just because I kinda like the atmosphere there. Anyway CRZ has been good for one thing, and that is the Exodar, I often see many low levels of all races just hanging out there. Plus I have actually helped many new players who need to get off exodar and to stormwind, by grabbing my mage and porting them there. So yeah in that sense, CRZ has helped.

Plus there seems to be quite a few more level 85-90s hanging around there also. Much more than before CRZ arrived.

[SamR]

...were you playing WoW before CRZ and still considered it an MMORPG?

You mean like vanilla and TBC WoW where even 1-60 zones were crowded and you would always see people around while leveling? That felt very MMORPG.

Leveling through entire zones without seeing a single other person like would happen sometimes in latter Wrath didn't feel very MMORPG.

Things picked up a bit in Cata because of the revamp and there were lots of people around in the lower level zones, especially in the beginning of Cata and it felt more like an MMORPG again.

[Deleted]

I dont play wow anymore, but I started playing end of TBC. I learnt the hard way to watch my back out in the world, especially tarren mill area where alliance players were higher levels. And sure, I had to watch my back and sometimes got stuck to ninja away from people ganking me. But the world felt so much alive! Not long after, all worlds except northrend (reached max level once wotlk hit) were pretty much empty. Not many people leveling up, and I guess there's still just a few doing it. Also, you can level without leaving the cities through dungeon finder and random battlegrounds.
I dont know how this actually is working in reality, but I cant see why some ganking would be so horrible? Sure, I understand some people rolled on pvp servers because you were pretty much as safe as on a pve server... hardly any difference. With more people on pvp servers war will happen, and it scares pve players and they realise they either didnt know or just expected their rolling on pvp server to be without instanced pvp or they just didnt know what pvp server meant when rolling on it. But other players shouldnt have to pay for their mistakes, some people roll on pvp servers for the sake of them being pvp servers, and it should be up to the pvp afraid people to swap servers if they aren't happy with business. As simple as that.

Its more like you join a PvP server. You dabble into in. You grow onto the server. You're good there. You like it. Then, some time later, suddenly the French Revolution takes place and everything is changed. Tough shit. Man up. No? I didn't choose this. If you're not happy with a change in life, something you don't agree with your government decided, it is OK to express this. Its alright. Its allowed. Its good. Its healthy. Then some loons claim as if CRZ is the second coming of Christ. Its only oil on the plate, not acknowledging there's problems. So what's the ultimate solution if you don't like the government in your country. Something people did before WWII started. You leave your country. Akin to unsub. But before you do that, you can attempt to discuss the issue, maybe it gets changed.

'nother thing I'd like to add is the secrecy around CRZ. Like, which realms are connected? What if I like my realm, but not the CRZ? I should not search for a realm I like. I should search for a CRZ I like. Good luck with researching that before you roll, without spending that 20 EUR faction change.

[Mormolyce]

All of the "problems" with CRZ have been part of the game since Vanilla. Resource and rare mob competition - this is INTENDED, the pre-CRZ world was actually broken in regards to that. World PVP - people clamoured for it on the forums for years and now it's back people clamour to remove it. Personally I think world PVP is fine, possibly except ganking - which again has been part of WoW since launch - but to truly fix ganking would require a major rebuild of WoW's PVP. Scaling your level up to max when attacked by a level 90 for example. Making PVP Power/Resil inoperative outside Arenas/BGs. Something along those lines would even the playing field so you could actually fight back. I thought something like that would be a good idea long before CRZ, but Blizzard isn't really interested. Big change, and controversial.

The one big thing they REALLY need to address IMO is removing your inability to group with someone while in a dungeon or LFR queue. That really hampers social grouping out in the world.

So...my question is, WHY in gods name was cross realm zones added to the game?

So you don't quest through an empty world... pretty big deal for an MMO you know... it's been very successful in that respect.

[Deleted]

You mean like vanilla and TBC WoW where even 1-60 zones were crowded and you would always see people around while leveling? That felt very MMORPG.

Leveling through entire zones without seeing a single other person like would happen sometimes in latter Wrath didn't feel very MMORPG.

Things picked up a bit in Cata because of the revamp and there were lots of people around in the lower level zones, especially in the beginning of Cata and it felt more like an MMORPG again.

Could be, but I grew up with people around me from 1-10 and then nothing. Why? Because apparently people then left Kalimdor and went to Eastern Kingdoms. I always loved Kalimdor, even in WC3, so didn't do it (and once I noticed, I didn't like much EK). So my WoW memory is very different from yours.

Now we had low pop, medium pop, and high pop realms. You picked the one you liked. It wasn't easy. There was way more choice besides PvP vs PvE, PvP-RP vs PvE-RP.

And now we got CRZ. CRZ is basically all these people like yourself saying I must play on a higher pop than I used to. The blatant arrogance. As if I am not able to fire up a brainfart and roll on a high pop realm if I actually preferred that. I don't prefer that, TYVM. And now these same oppressors who complained the world is empty not only got their default choice changed to their preference, they deprived us from our preference. Over night. Because to me, CRZ was like a bombshell.

[mvaliz]

So you don't quest through an empty world... pretty big deal for an MMO you know... it's been very successful in that respect.

No... actually that's not a big deal at all in an MMO... particularly an MMO who has spent the past 8 years shifting the entire overworld experience into a SINGLE-PLAYER EXPERIENCE where the MMO experience is focused on the end-game, groups, and cities.

I mean, look at the most successful expansion to-date... Wrath of the Lich King. What did it add to players from 1-55? BARBER SHOPS! That's IT! NOBODY COMPLAINED and the expansion was the best subscriptions to-date.

WoW hasn't viewed the presence of people in old-zones as a problem for 8 years... nobody complained "We need more people running about in the overworld". They complained "We need more people on our servers to guild up with".

[Deleted]

By the way when you say CRZ phonetically you get CRaZ or crass:

crass [kræs]
adj
stupid; gross
[from Latin crassus thick, dense, gross]
crassly adv
crassness , crassitude n

[muto]

I don't like it. Too many try-hards ganking lower level players.

[Dadwen]

thinking back to my EQ days (camp check ORC1 Etc) having people around you can be overrated sometimes, is it nice to see people around in the game yes, is it nice to see the zone filled to expected capacity all the time in my opinion no...

*and on the 2 seater issue all you would need is 2 servers to test it till it worked, it should have been worked out there.

[Mancowski]

I only hate it because of leveling alts and the game isn't pushing for group questing like it did in the day. If they want zones to be full, then they need to bring back group quests. Stuff that really needs 3+ people.

Also make guards spawn significantly stronger for every group of them killed by groups of the opposite faction. So that they cannot keep a town camped for hours.

My main toon is on another server right now. So i can't defend myself, lol

[Nerraw]

I don't like it. Too many try-hards ganking lower level players.

I know this will sound like a broken record, but try a PvE server?

[SamR]

And now we got CRZ. CRZ is basically all these people like yourself saying I must play on a higher pop than I used to. The blatant arrogance. As if I am not able to fire up a brainfart and roll on a high pop realm if I actually preferred that. I don't prefer that, TYVM. And now these same oppressors who complained the world is empty not only got their default choice changed to their preference, they deprived us from our preference. Over night. Because to me, CRZ was like a bombshell.

You act as if low pop realms were a design decision by Blizzard and not a bad side effect of such a large number of servers that they're trying to find ways to fix.

Leveling by yourself without seeing another player is not how Blizzard wants their game to be played. You disagree so you quit. That's fine. There are plenty of underpopulated and dying MMOs where you can find the solitude you're looking for.

[Alewen]

*and on the 2 seater issue all you would need is 2 servers to test it till it worked, it should have been worked out there.

Agreed. Heck when I shifted to stag form, I had the glyph to make myself a mount, random guy hopped on, and we tested it out. He immediately got knocked off when trying to get to westfall. And I made a detailed bug report about on on their forums. The zoning don't just effect mounts either. If you are a druid with the charm critters skill, you can only have it follow you around that zone. Cross a zone and it removes the critter as if you entered an instance.

I believe that is where the issues lie. The system is treating each zone like an instance, and that's where the hangups, the flashing, and the dismounting is coming from. The solution then is simple. If they intend to force everyone to endure CRZ, then it needs to be continent wide, not zone wide. So change CRZ from Cross Realm Zone, to Cross Realm Continent (CRC) and that will eliminate the 2 seater problem, the hangups, the flashing, and then the only 2 bugs left to fix, is reporting and ignoring CRZ people.

[muto]

I know this will sound like a broken record, but try a PvE server?

Sure. You paying for my transfer?

[shaft4783]

Thankfully I got aeonaxx and tlpd before the crz's were implemented.