Cross Realm Zones: All the downsides of a high pop server with none of the benefits?

[Ulgrim]

So I logged on the other day to farm some frostweave for my alt, maybe check around for some rare spawns. I arrived in Icecrown and was a bit shocked to see nothing but piles of corpses, and players from different servers flying over head like vultures waiting to swoop down and steal kills(and I'm sure they were just as happy to see me). I was a bit upset as this was one of the few upsides to playing on a server that had been deserted. Instead of competing with one person for that rare mount, or the crafting materials I needed to level my professions, I now found myself competing with several.

There's the downside, but what about the upside? Sure I can do a few quests here and there with friends from another server, but that's about it. Honestly, it's not a trade-off I would make. It's not like I get access to a larger pool of guilds to choose from. Am I missing something? Is there more to it than what I'm seeing? If they did it just to make servers seem less empty, then they should just bite the bullet and merge a few.

[Talyrius]

They should allow you to opt-out of it.

[MouseD]

They should allow you to opt-out of it.

That is what I like to be able to do ...is Opt out if I want too....right now today is fishing tor in Dalaran...my realm Cairne is central time but as of this moment Dalaran right now is showing PST so no NPC is up and normally our fishing torument would of already started by now.

[Deipfryde]

I'm surprised that Icecrown is even a part of CRZ. That almost makes it sound like any zone in the game is eligible for being CRZ regardless.

That kind of defeats the entire point of farming things like that.. because no one else is around. If half the server's at a farming location, then it's not really a farming location anymore, is it? Not if it takes you hours to get a few stacks of cloth. You'd do far better running dungeons for cloth at that point. High population and easy groups are worse than pointless when you're trying to do something that requires you to be alone.

I'm also wondering what their criteria is for CRZ.. My server (Burning Legion-US) is a Medium population server. If it really is smack in the middle, we should (in theory) see almost no CRZ at all. It should (again, in theory) never be "too high" or "too low". And yet Durotar/Orgrimmar is now hosting even more players from other realms. As if lag and framerate wasn't bad enough with only our own server's population crowding the city, now we've got at least one or two other realms joining in.

[Lamorak]

Then everyone (bar leveling characters) opts out and the entire implementation of the feature would have been largely useless.

Its largely useless anyway and the only ones that do get any benefit are PvP'ers, there are no group quests left from 1-85 and i havent seen any in MoP yet, i dont really know why they added this feature to pve realms at all since they killed off any reason to need a group outside of dungeons.

[silmarilen]

there are no people in the world: people complain about how the world is empty and it used to be so much better because you actually met people outside of citys back in the days
there are people in the world: people complain about how there are too many people and you cant play properly

[Shampro]

there are no people in the world: people complain about how the world is empty and it used to be so much better because you actually met people outside of citys back in the days
there are people in the world: people complain about how there are too many people and you cant play properly

People will NEVER be happy about anything EVER. Its a fact that we just kind of need to get use to.

Ive only had good experiences so far, ive been invited to raid Honor Hold and other places with a grp that one of my IRL friends makes weekly and its amazingly fun beeing able to group up out in the world and raids without actually haveing to transfer. Beeing able to participate in world pvp and other activites its more than enough trade-off.

[MouseD]

And right now for me on Cairne the whole dang fishing derby is screwed up.....dalaran is 2 hours behind what is my normal time....SB is 2 hours ahead of Dal time for me right now .....so I have to spend time trying to find a zone I can fish in for the shark that won't change times on me and pray that nobody else comes into my zone and my time changes due to more folks coming into zone....so how freaking awesome is that now....this crap even messes up the one down STV on sunday.....I was never one to complain that zones were empty when I leveled new toons...I much preferred to be alone anyway when leveling up....

---------- Post added 2012-09-08 at 04:11 PM ----------

Case in point look at blizzard forums right now about the fishing derby that happens on Saturday's

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/to...2892594?page=1

[MoanaLisa]

While it's been a messy start--a messy start with something majorly new from Blizzard...who knew?--they are apparently going to clarify some things soon and when we know more, people will be able to complain more intelligently. It's correct that this is being beta tested on live--I'm not sure how else you could do it properly--but most of what I've seen are more like bugs and adjustments than reasons to think that CRZ's are going to be catastrophic events in player's lives.

I wouldn't expect anyone to be able to opt out though. That's the equivalent of more or less asking for a phased solo zone and that river is definitely running the other direction. The primary thing to me is fixing the time zone business which really is annoying.

[Count Zero]

I was happy with CRZ until I saw Aeonaxx get mounted the moment he spawned, by someone not on my server.

[BenBos]

So I logged on the other day to farm some frostweave for my alt, maybe check around for some rare spawns. I arrived in Icecrown and was a bit shocked to see nothing but piles of corpses, and players from different servers flying over head like vultures waiting to swoop down and steal kills(and I'm sure they were just as happy to see me). I was a bit upset as this was one of the few upsides to playing on a server that had been deserted. Instead of competing with one person for that rare mount, or the crafting materials I needed to level my professions, I now found myself competing with several.

There's the downside, but what about the upside? Sure I can do a few quests here and there with friends from another server, but that's about it. Honestly, it's not a trade-off I would make. It's not like I get access to a larger pool of guilds to choose from. Am I missing something? Is there more to it than what I'm seeing? If they did it just to make servers seem less empty, then they should just bite the bullet and merge a few.

Yes there is more to it than what you see, MUCH more.

But frankly I don't care explaining it. I'll just give you some keywords and juggle with them:

- populated MMORPG in every zone (Merging servers don't populate spread world zones at all).
- Battletag says Hi
- future MMO development without realms
- playing with 1 million people instead of 500 on each server cluster solves pretty much the problems of present day MMO single server play.

As Blizzard always introduces these new techniques in a chain of developments, see region wide AH, alternate phased realities per planet in game's like for instance Titan and of course open cross server guild play.

Diablo 3 already introduced the one server per region principle, Blizzard now evolves to make this happen to all of their upcoming on line games.

It solves THE enigma of single server based fantasy mmorpg's : how to populate everything forever over all that incredible spread content.

So look further then the nose.

[PHOENIXZERO]

How about that WG/TB fun since our servers got the cross-realm function!

>_<

I'm not opposed to CRZ but it needs a lot of work and if they're going to do it with stuff with a set time they better damn make sure stuff is synced..

[Wondercrab]

They should allow you to opt-out of it.

Absolutely, that way it'll be quite the opposite, we'll have access to some of the benefits of a highly populated realm with none of the downsides!

I really do hope an opt-out is implemented, I love playing on my quiet realm.

[BenBos]

Absolutely, that way it'll be quite the opposite, we'll have access to some of the benefits of a highly populated realm with none of the downsides!

I really do hope an opt-out is implemented, I love playing on my quiet realm.

The opt out will never be in. You'll live in a populated world post MoP. Get used to it.

[Zeta333]

Yeh this is pretty retarded if people have to share the same nodes and rarespawns, These things spawn times and rates are ballanced around a single servers worth of population, Bringing multiple realms into the mix your negating this, I doubt blizzard will go back to fix or change this, they will just say "sucks for you try harder" and shrug thier shoulders, Look at TOGC anub, fight was never changed to accomidate the massivly increased HP pools when cata dropped. This is just another instance of them implemtenting shit cus they think its cool and then brushing aside people who dont like it as whiners and ungratefull.

[salamala]

@ BenBos,
Thank you for reaffirming why YOU like this idea, which has nothing to do with what the OP says at all.
He doesn't like this idea and is asking whether an Opt-out option might be coming around.
the upsides you list he doesn't see as up-sides so your delusion that everyone thinks like you is still just that.

[Synche]

Yes there is more to it than what you see, MUCH more.

But frankly I don't care explaining it. I'll just give you some keywords and juggle with them:

- populated MMORPG in every zone (Merging servers don't populate spread world zones at all).
- Battletag says Hi
- future MMO development without realms
- playing with 1 million people instead of 500 on each server cluster solves pretty much the problems of present day MMO single server play.

As Blizzard always introduces these new techniques in a chain of developments, see region wide AH, alternate phased realities per planet in game's like for instance Titan and of course open cross server guild play.

Diablo 3 already introduced the one server per region principle, Blizzard now evolves to make this happen to all of their upcoming on line games.

It solves THE enigma of single server based fantasy mmorpg's : how to populate everything forever over all that incredible spread content.

So look further then the nose.

This is the best comment made so far. People are just QQ'ing because they can't farm to their hearts content anymore or have a guaranteed rare mount.

Sure, there are things that can be improved, but that is the same as anything. I love the CRZ feature and it makes the world alive again.

"This is just another instance of them implemtenting shit cus they think its cool and then brushing aside people who dont like it as whiners and ungratefull. "

You have just answered your own question. People act entitled just because they play the game, and think they are arm chair devs.

[Atomsk69]

Then everyone (bar leveling characters) opts out and the entire implementation of the feature would have been largely useless.

i for one think this whole cross realm server crap was and is completely a useless feature. i for one, dont level outside of org anymore. there is no need to farm older content anymore. i have very deep pockets so i dont need to do dailies. lately while i work IRL, all i do in wow is lvl my druid through dungeon finder. blizz really should have just merged select battlegroups into 1 server. i mean think about it. say a battlegroup has mostly all low pop status, then they would merge that whole battlegroup or part of it into 1 server and have it join another battlegroup.

[bot v2.38beta]

What bothers me are the groups from high pop servers like Illidan and KT coming to my low low low pop realm to get the Darkmoon Fair death match chest. They do this by making a lvl 1 on my server and making a Real ID group with it. It's gone from 3-6 of us having fun to being STOMPED by groups of "Pros" that can't get the chest on their own server.

[MoanaLisa]

I was happy with CRZ until I saw Aeonaxx get mounted the moment he spawned, by someone not on my server.

You'll need to get used to the idea that in fact he actually was on your server. This is why the opt-out thing is extremely unlikely to happen. Blizzard is actively merging and unmerging zones dynamically. It's not the sort of thing that you can set a flag for and say "Leave me behind."

But, really, get over to Blizz's forums with your concerns and make them known. If you don't do it now, you likely won't get a chance later on.