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

[banyentertainment]

yeah dont make me laugh. seriously this was the worst idea they could have come up with. they should have focused more on merging low pop servers together to make them have more populations. maybe they should use eve as a example, and have servers like theirs

how can you be so short sighted ?
i haven`t seen this in action but from what people have said, it seems like the future of mmos, merging servers is retarded, age of conan did it to their low pop and its crap. People that didnt play vanila complain because they dont know how to protect themselves ..i for one am tired of having endless empty maps all the time and playing the game always in orgrimmar.
MMO stands for massive MULTIPLAYER

I am only concerned of how demanding it will be on my crappy machine

[Glorious Leader]

The policy is to refuse to do it as near as I can tell. They've done it once or twice in very rare cases but basically they simply don't do it. The revenue stream from transfers is probably part of that but if they can save more money by merging realms virtually and not limiting realm architecture to one box per realm which is really ancient technology by this time, they'll do that in a heartbeat.

I guess we'll see eventually what they're up to.

EDIT: Yeah, it's all about the money and the investment. I'm expecting that whatever they have planned for server architecture for Titan is what's driving this but I don't actually know anything more than you do. You look for clues and apply common sense. It can lead you down the wrong road easily enough.

You also look at what they've done in the past as a judge for what the future will bring. That's what leads me to believe we won't actually loose the actual servers themselves, they will simply just be subject to more and more cross realm functionality.

---------- Post added 2012-09-09 at 01:10 AM ----------

how can you be so short sighted ?
i haven`t seen this in action but from what people have said, it seems like the future of mmos, merging servers is retarded, age of conan did it to their low pop and its crap. People that didnt play vanila complain because they dont know how to protect themselves ..i for one am tired of having endless empty maps all the time and playing the game always in orgrimmar.

I am only concerned of how demanding it will be on my crappy machine

First of all people said beta max was the future at one point and yet here we are. You can and should take a grain of salt (especially on the internet and especially on these forums) for whatever "people" say.

Secondly AoC and WoW is not an even remotely fair comparison. WoW can merge servers and people won't leave in droves. Look they've managed to retain 9 million subs with a DISMAL patch release cycle this expansion. They can merge servers and be safe. Now why they don't do this is another matter entirely...

[MoanaLisa]

You also look at what they've done in the past as a judge for what the future will bring. That's what leads me to believe we won't actually loose the actual servers themselves, they will simply just be subject to more and more cross realm functionality.

Actually, that's why I mentioned D3 earlier.

[Glorious Leader]

Actually, that's why I mentioned D3 earlier.

D3 isn't WoW. That's not really a comparison you want to make because wow is vastly more complicated. D3 may function on that model but we should compare like things to like things. The features and functionality behind something like warcraft eclipse D3 which is relatively simple by comparison. The history of world of warcraft suggests they will continue to simply just add more cross realm functionality and keep the architecture as it is.

I should stress you really don't want them to compare it to D3. Error 57 plagued them for weeks and it lead to quite the uproar. I'd love to see the brewhaha caused by anything like that happening in WoW.

[McFrotton]

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.

Because everyone and their mother cried that the world was feeling empty, IMO the nodes should be realm specific and not shared, when the feature was announced everyone was liek OMFG BBQ its so awesome its gonna be revolutionary and all the fun.....then it came on live server and people realized that ...questing would become ''competitive'' lol.

[Glorious Leader]

Because everyone and their mother cried that the world was feeling empty, IMO the nodes should be realm specific and not shared, when the feature was announced everyone was liek OMFG BBQ its so awesome its gonna be revolutionary and all the fun.....then it came on live server and people realized that ...questing would become ''competitive'' lol.

The world did feel empty but this was for a number of reasons, none of which have been addressed by CRZ. One reason is that leveling is simply to fast. Your done with zones in a very quick amount of time so your constantly moving on and you almost never see anybody. Another reason is that once your finished a zone you have no reason to go back.

[MoanaLisa]

D3 isn't WoW. That's not really a comparison you want to make because wow is vastly more complicated. D3 may function on that model but we should compare like things to like things. The features and functionality behind something like warcraft eclipse D3 which is relatively simple by comparison. The history of world of warcraft suggests they will continue to simply just add more cross realm functionality and keep the architecture as it is.

I should stress you really don't want them to compare it to D3. Error 57 plagued them for weeks and it lead to quite the uproar. I'd love to see the brewhaha caused by anything like that happening in WoW.

Oh, no doubt. I've already agreed that this is all speculation, pure and simple although it's in Blizzard's interest to standardize their back-end server architecture as much as possible, especially given battletags and the rest. You're correct in that there may be things that would work against it. I was a little taken aback at the start of beta when I realized that they had somehow managed to put about half-a-million toons from the AP onto 4 realms total world-wide. Something's going on. That's not how WoW currently works at all. Time for dinner. Nice having a little colloquy with you. Best regards.

[Zenotetsuken]

Not that anyone cares, but I also seriously dislike even the idea of it. It is nothing more than an attempt to create the illusion of population without getting to the core issue. Some people (like myself) actually CHOOSE to play on low pop servers simply because the solitude and low stress atmosphere is far more important than the benefits of playing on high or even med pop servers.
That atmosphere is being forcibly taken away, and replaced with the stress and chaos that we have chosen to avoid. The thread title says is all, "All the downsides of a high pop server with none of the benefits."
Please, show me how this system benefits someone that chooses to play on a low pop server BECAUSE it is a low pop server...

[Goldfingaz]

I was a little taken aback at the start of beta when I realized that they had somehow managed to put about half-a-million toons from the AP onto 4 realms total world-wide. Something's going on. That's not how WoW currently works at all. Time for dinner. Nice having a little colloquy with you. Best regards.

I personally believe this number is a little exaggerated (By a little I mean a ton). Also, all it takes to have more players on 1 realm is more hardware, it isn't a hard concept.

I personally believe you're looking way too far into it and are hoping for too much.

@The people that say "Make nodes non-shared between realms", what about skinning? Just going to ignore that?

I really don't like the idea of CRZ, there are just so many things wrong with it. If they eventually made this into one big world it would be too crowded. I really do not look forward to whispering people via /w Randomguy-theforgottencoast... just too much of a hassle.

[banyentertainment]

Not that anyone cares, but I also seriously dislike even the idea of it. It is nothing more than an attempt to create the illusion of population without getting to the core issue. Some people (like myself) actually CHOOSE to play on low pop servers simply because the solitude and low stress atmosphere is far more important than the benefits of playing on high or even med pop servers.
That atmosphere is being forcibly taken away, and replaced with the stress and chaos that we have chosen to avoid. The thread title says is all, "All the downsides of a high pop server with none of the benefits."
Please, show me how this system benefits someone that chooses to play on a low pop server BECAUSE it is a low pop server...

play on a pve server then.
sheesh.

[Frumpy Frumpy Frak]

play on a pve server then.
sheesh.

No one is complaining about getting ganked.
They're complaining about being forced to compete for quest mobs and mat spawns with people who aren't even on their server.

[Seegtease]

Wait, do I have to share rares and nodes with other servers now?

So if normally I log on during late hours to take advantage of low pop to do a bit of farming, or to hunt a rare, now it's going to be crowded all the time?

Good luck with hunters getting pets. Now we have to wait an 8-24 hour spawn, then share that chance with 10 other servers! Terrific! And I take it they didn't increase spawn rates to compensate?

[Venteus]

My server (Kil'Jaeden) has been hosting events both on Alliance and Horde for cross-server PvP. I think it's a great way to bring activity to med/low pop servers. It also gives some variety for high pop players.

[Zenotetsuken]

play on a pve server then.
sheesh.

I don't remember saying anything at all about PvP. Let's go back and read what I said... Nope, didn't say anything about PvP. Troll elsewhere friend.

[banyentertainment]

I don't remember saying anything at all about PvP. Let's go back and read what I said... Nope, didn't say anything about PvP. Troll elsewhere friend.

was implicit in this statement

Some people (like myself) actually CHOOSE to play on low pop servers simply because the solitude and low stress atmosphere is far more important than the benefits of playing on high or even med pop servers.

[Zyrinx]

As I already stated several times, there is exactly 0 benefit of CRZ at all (at least on a PVE server).
I see only downsides: Waiting for quest mobs respawn and competing for node spawns.

There is not a single advantage. Sure - you will meet other people while leveling. But they are not "friends", they are competitors. There are no group quests anymore, leveling alone will always be faster. And unlike many people here claim, there is no social aspect. You will not talk to anyone you meet while leveling, the same way as you will hardly get a "hi" when you enter a much closer group in lfg or lfr.

I believe Blizzard uses this simply to save on servers. Nobody really knows what their server structure looks like, but they can now probably merge several world servers into a single one.

I'm pretty much with you on this. Won't speak to Blizz's motivations, but you're right - they just tripled (at least?) the difficulty of each node and rare.

[banyentertainment]

I'm pretty much with you on this. Won't speak to Blizz's motivations, but you're right - they just tripled (at least?) the difficulty of each node and rare.

who cares ? this game isn`t about grinding anymore.
Buy it off the ah from bots and blizzard bots (shock and awe!)
human players only undercut and inflate prices anyway

[Chirri]

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

Honestly, I think leveling characters are the only ones who'd benefit from its existence (as it works right now) anyway. I think it's a good thing for a new player to see a world with other players, it makes the world feel a bit livelier. Oddly enough, it's been years since low level players have had any reason to treat one another with civility - Elites and Group Quests were removed so long ago they don't actually need or want to interact should they spot someone else. High level zones around raiding get traffic, mid- and high- level zones used for farming, rare hunting, competitions (fishing), simply become stressful... in my opinion.

I really think CRZ is a fantastic idea, but it's clearly buggy, and it's making the fishing tournaments a pain. Checking the time when I'm out and about is quite awkward now - I have the clock set to server time so I can keep track of how long I've got til raid time, or til some time limit I've set is up; for some reason, while running an alt through Dustwallow Marsh, the time was 7 hours off. And not even Oceania 7 hours, but EU 7 hours. I play on a US server. /boggle

They waited so long to work on, and then implement something like this. I feel it would have been wiser to release it for Vanilla zones first, work out kinks, then scale it up to the expansions individually so people would be familiar with it, and it wouldn't be so much of a buggy shock to the players.

This is one of those things that's more likely to help low pop servers than anyone else. EVERY server's low pop right now, but Blizzard knows which ones are actually chronically low pop, and which will likely explode with too many players when MoP lands.

Players have adapted their expectations and play styles around their own servers. Now those expectations are being squashed, and a competitive play style isn't one many find entertaining. We've been trained to find farming somewhat relaxing and mind numbing. Now it's stressful and mind numbing. That's not fun.

[MoanaLisa]

I personally believe this number is a little exaggerated (By a little I mean a ton). Also, all it takes to have more players on 1 realm is more hardware, it isn't a hard concept.

There were a million AP holders out there. 500,000 assumes 50% of those on beta servers. That seems reasonable to me although of course there wouldn't necessarily be that many on at once all the time. Pick whatever number you like.

When I first hit Pandaria I had never seen so many toons around in my entire life and that includes a stretch on Illidan on live. And there was very little in the way of persistent lag. This seemed rather astonishing to me and to anyone else who thought about it for more than 10 seconds.

At the end of the day here are some simple facts: For all of beta there are exactly two (2) realms for North America: one for PvP (Gilneas), one for PvE (Lost Isles). There's another for EU (Mekkatorque) and one for Korea (Hamuul) to make four total. But for AP holders in Beta that's it for realms. So consider it exaggerated if you like. If it was a simple matter to 'add more hardware' I would think the current realm schema of Full/Medium/Low would be highly irrelevant.

P.S. You'll whisper to them via Battletag. Their realm won't matter.

[Giants41]

They could add a opt out option... But overall i really like the feature, i have met a few people questing who i was able to continually quest with which is really fun