Cross-Realm zones coming to WoW

[BloodOmen]

For many years now, the significant majority of the player population online at any given time has consisted mostly of characters at or near the level cap. This has resulted in an environment where characters that are leveling up experience a world that has fewer other players to interact with than what the world was designed for. Cross-realm zones give us the capability to ensure that level-up zones retain a population size that feels more like the high level areas of the game, leading to a more fun play experience for characters of all levels.

Good idea I think, might even bring back world pvp to a degree.

 

[BloodOmen]

Rest of the questions etc incase thou is more curious!

"Q. Why cross-realm zones?
For many years now, the significant majority of the player population online at any given time has consisted mostly of characters at or near the level cap. This has resulted in an environment where characters that are leveling up experience a world that has fewer other players to interact with than what the world was designed for. Cross-realm zones give us the capability to ensure that level-up zones retain a population size that feels more like the high level areas of the game, leading to a more fun play experience for characters of all levels.

Q. How do cross-realm zones work?
When you’re in a zone that is set as a ‘cross-realm zone’ you’ll notice that in addition to the players you’d ordinarily see from your realm, you’ll also see (and be able to play with) players from other realms. This will happen seamlessly, and players will be able to group and quest as they normally would with players from their own realm.

Q. How will this work on boats or zeppelins?
Usually transitions will occur on area boundaries (think moving from Darkshore to Ashenvale).

Q. Can I form groups with the people I meet in the zone?
Yes! You can group and talk to others within the cross-server zone normally though trading will be restricted much as it is within raids, dungeons, or battlegrounds.

Q. Will my cross-realm group be disbanded if we move on to an adjacent zone together, like from Goldshire to Westfall or from Thousand Needles to Feralas?
Much like how cross-realm groups currently work, your party won’t be disbanded when you move through different zones, though if you’re not in the same home realm, you won’t be able to see each other if you’re in separate zone instances.

Q. Will I be able to group with my friends?
Yes, you will be able to group with your Real ID friends, provided they are within the same faction. The functionality works the same as it does for cross-realm dungeons, raids, or Battlegrounds.

Q. What level range do my friends and I have to be within in order to group?
There is no restriction on level ranges. You’ll be able to group with anyone you would normally be able to.

Q. Can I go into main capital cities while grouped with others?
Capital cities and areas with regularly high populations will not be set as cross-server areas/zones so you will not be able to enter into the same instance of a city as someone who is from a different realm.

Q. Will I be able to trade with others I meet?
Trading restrictions are in place much the same as they are in cross-realm dungeons, raids, and battlegrounds.

Q. How is group loot handled?
Group looting will function the same as it would with any group you would create through normal play.

Q. Who will I be playing with?
You’ll be able to interact with players from within a select pool of realms which will make it possible to run into a player in Redridge that you already ran into within Westfall.

Q. What areas will be shared?
This can vary from realm to realm and relies on how densely populated (or underpopulated) an area is. Capital cities and areas with regularly high populations will not be eligible for area sharing.

Q. What about resources or gathering nodes, will those be shared too?
Resources and nodes will be available to all parties within the shared area the same as always. We will be keeping a close eye on the impact of area sharing and should an area become too populated, we are capable of adjusting how many realms are able to connect to a shared area.

Q. Does this mean that Auction Houses will be merged?
No, when any player access an Auction House, they will be only able to access their home realm’s Auction House.

Q. What about zones that are already overpopulated, like new race starting zones?
With this technology, we can also flag zones to allow for more than one copy of that zone per realm. Players on that realm will be split among those copies in order to alleviate problems due to overpopulation. Players won’t normally see or interact with those on a different instance of their zone, although joining a party will relocate all party members to a single instance of that zone."

 

[LordjOX]

That's a pretty cool feature. I only play WoW for a month or so after an expansion, but leveling up always seemed kinda dead (especially in TBC, Wotlk). This is a nice addition teaming up to kill questmobs faster. Plus ofc play with same-faction friends that are on different realms.

 

[Ctuchik]

Great idea but it will not actually do anything for people leveling lowbies.

If you are the ONLY one questing in a zone it doesn't matter if it's a cross realm zone or not. You're still the only one there.

i had a peek at most of the vanilla zones a few days ago and it was pretty much deserted.

People already have all the characters they want sitting at or close to 85.

Still a good idea but they are many many years to late for that to have any use for people that isn't playing in the latest expansion zones.

 

[LordjOX]

There's always someone questing in some of the zones, on different realms. Add that up and you get a few handful which is better than none

 

[BloodOmen]

has its pros and cons anyway, pros are there will be more people to interact with and the cons are obviously griefers etc on pvp clusters (I assume it'll be clustered based on server type, I don't see how a PVP server would work zoning with a PVE server)

 

[old.Tohtori]

Great idea but it will not actually do anything for people leveling lowbies.

If you are the ONLY one questing in a zone it doesn't matter if it's a cross realm zone or not. You're still the only one there.

I think the point is that there will be a higher chance of people being there, when there's all the people from different realms in the same zone.

Ofcourse you can't help it if there's just no one there on ANY realm, but this will help the situation in a rather nice way.

 

[Syri]

Great idea but it will not actually do anything for people leveling lowbies.

If you are the ONLY one questing in a zone it doesn't matter if it's a cross realm zone or not. You're still the only one there.

i had a peek at most of the vanilla zones a few days ago and it was pretty much deserted.

People already have all the characters they want sitting at or close to 85.

Still a good idea but they are many many years to late for that to have any use for people that isn't playing in the latest expansion zones.

While I don't fully agree with the lack of people levelling, this does bring to mind the fact that you don't just have to consider the zone. Since cataclysm, you now have to consider the phase as well. The old world zones were changed to be so heavily reliant on phasing, with some areas even having 4 or 5 different phases for that same region. If you're not on exactly the same quest stages as someone else in that region, you just won't see them, same server or not. So basically, to see someone else in the world at the moment, they need to be on the same server and same quest. With this feature, they'll just need to be on the same quest. Not that big an improvement really, when you think about it. The main benefit that I can see is that you can at least form groups with friends on different servers and go through the world content together (providing you're on the same faction, of course).

 

[Soazak]

So it's effectively Clustering (that DAoC saw) but individual zones, but this will change depending on the population of those zones?

Sounds like a really good idea tbh

 

[Ctuchik]

Another question that arise would be, WHY would we want to group? The game is so solo friendly now that there isn't a point with it. There is not a single open world elite mob in the entire vanilla WoW.

Faster? Maybe, though probably not when you take into account all the delays of "afk brb" that usually haunt pugs.....

 

[Soazak]

Another question that arise would be, WHY would we want to group? The game is so solo friendly now that there isn't a point with it. There is not a single open world elite mob in the entire vanilla WoW.

Faster? Maybe, though probably not when you take into account all the delays of "afk brb" that usually haunt pugs.....

That was my first thought, I rarely grouped in WoW while XPing, too much of a hassle and generally slower for the reasons you mention...though I'm sure there are some people who enjoy grouping with randoms

 

[Ctuchik]

Owell, that's probably all just excusaes blizzard run with to get away from admitting that they are prepping for a potentially MASSIVE sub drop once GW2 and all the other MMO's release..

 

[BloodOmen]

they're always prepping for a massive sub drop... but it never happens except when they release new expansions and people dont like them *cough* Cataclysm *cough*

 

[Soazak]

they're always prepping for a massive sub drop... but it never happens except when they release new expansions and people dont like them *cough* Cataclysm *cough*

It's getting to that point where it will happen though, WoW has become very stale for even some of the most hardcore fans, as other games at last seem to be trying to improve on the typical MMO rather than just copy&paste Azeroth

I don't think it will die or anything, not many MMOs do, but I think a lot will jump ship to Tera & GW2.

 

[BloodOmen]

From the forum posts I've been reading about GW2 I'm starting to think it'll flop but we'll see, seems a lot of people arent happy about no real healers and everyone just piling onto the front load damage classes. Couldnt give 2 hoots about WoW's population personally, out of the 10mil or so subs they have you'll probably only ever even meet maybe 50-100 people that you care to get along with so the rest is just insignificant in that respect.

I do doubt however GW2 and TERA will even put a dent in WoW's subscribers but once again we'll see at the next earnings conference.

 

[Mabs]

seems a lot of people arent happy about no real healers and everyone just piling onto the front load damage classes

thats what put me off GW2 :/

 

[Soazak]

That's my personal dislike of it also, I've always prefered playing a healer. Their support system does work in terms of damage mitigation rather than healing, and can make for some interesting teamwork, but I still prefer simply making bars go up

Tera really just didn't do it for me.

 

[Ctuchik]

seems a lot of people arent happy about no real healers and everyone just piling onto the front load damage classes.

What else should they do? As there are no real "class roles" EVERY class can do frontload damage...

And if something else is needed they just switch weapon sets....

I wouldn't pay to much attention to the forum whiners over there, if they didn't have "zomg no healers" to whine about they would find something else to bitch over... Their lives would be pointless if they didn't have anything to complain about.

That's my personal dislike of it also, I've always prefered playing a healer. Their support system does work in terms of damage mitigation rather than healing, and can make for some interesting teamwork, but I still prefer simply making bars go up

I like playing a healer to, but it doesn't really take any skill playing one when all you need to do to keep someone alive is to overheal your arse off, even in pvp.

A good/overgeared healer should not be in a position that it can carry the whole group. That's the job of the entire group...

 

[BloodOmen]

As said, we'll see.

 

[old.Tohtori]

if they didn't have "zomg no healers" to whine about they would find something else to bitch over...

Agreed. B*tching is inevitable, the only thing about b*tching we can take away is the level it's done on. So if it's some minor issue, we know a game is good

Hell, like diablos "no lan" whine

 

[Ctuchik]

So if it's some minor issue, we know a game is good

Err, no?

 

[old.Tohtori]

Err, no?

Yeah, think about it. If the worst thing whiners can pick apart is some minor issue that doesn't really effect the game at all, it does merit the game more.

 

[Ctuchik]

Sure, but first we must find a universally acceptable thing to point at and say "that's minor"....

You can't do that

 

[Gray]

This has probably come in a little late in the game so to speak, but in all honesty in the MoP beta there is mobs which are quite difficult, quite a step up considerably compared to any of the previous expansions before hand.

There is mobs around which exceed over 1 million health, which are just standard quest mobs. I could understand if some undergeared guy would have issues in downing them. Most of the time running through the beta, i'd be killing a mob and other people assist (ie, the untaggable mobs/quests) and i'd think "man, without them this probably would have taken an age to kill just one mob".

Today running through Townlong Steppes, i went and fought that Sha of Fear, or whatever mob it was. It had 16 million health. 16 million. There was two of us killing the boss, it took near 5 minutes to kill. I can only imagine what it would be like about 8 months after the expansion goes live.

 

[Ctuchik]

That's all Blizzard being retards and have nothing to do with zone populations....

 

[old.Tohtori]

Sure, but first we must find a universally acceptable thing to point at and say "that's minor"....

You can't do that

Fair enough really. We CAN do it(and most people do), but it wouldn't be apt to all

 

[LordjOX]

To be fair, I don't see in any way how this change can be negative

Just Ctuchik being a bitter whiner

 

[Ctuchik]

I never claimed it was something negative. I just can't see that it will be all that noticeable at low levels. I'm sure SOME people even at low levels will have a use for it. But for the rest of us it won't.