Capital City Sharding is really bad. FR

I admit. I might have downplayed some parts of the impact of city sharding during expansion launches. Using buzzwords that it’ll get better once the expansion matures and all that but it’s getting pretty bad and discouraging for anyone who has intentions to RP or interact with other players in the public space.

Two images two different characters and two screenshots taken within 2 mins of each other on the same server and it looks like completely separate worlds. Are there ways around this problem because this is fairly discouraging if my only hope for the few times I want to do random walk ups or just chill in Org is just to 'wait it out.

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The only way around sharding is to get invited to a group that’s already on one shard. You’ll be ported over there and even if you leave the group, you’ll still be on the shard.

At least until you reload the zone.

The only way to do it on a larger scale is with concerted cooperation with multiple people. During the last event in Orgrimmar I participated in, we basically had multiple people on alts parked on different shards -there were at least 3 or so- and whenever we saw someone who looked like they were in the area, we’d advise them to /whisper for an invite.

So while our shard was filled with dozens of people, the others were virtual ghost towns.

I wish instead of automatically shunting you off to additional instances, the game at least gave people a choice of which specific instance they wanted to be in. It’s fairly standard in most other MMO’s I’ve played.

Fortunately, the Diablo promotion ends in a week. I expect the sharding to end then as well.

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MoonGuard handled this by just roleplaying in a completely different zone for the most part, and as a result Duskwood is flourishing.

That considered… Crossroads ain’t too hard to get to, and Thunder Bluff has a Zeppelin straight to it. I think it’s weird how we don’t use them.

But you know what? I get the feeling that when Dragonflying works in the overworld, RPing in other zones will become a ton more convenient.

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All roads lead to Duskwood. ALL roads lead to Duskwood.

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Yes, but not all roads cross at Duskwood but they cross roads at the Crossroads.

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Legit question - why would Dragonflying improve other zone RP when flying still works in other zones?

I’m ignorant of Dragonflight’s titular mechanic so I’m not really certain how it differs from bog standard flying.

One major difference is that it’s much, much faster. I can’t seem to find an article that specifies exactly how fast the stages of Dragonriding speed are, but whenever I use my old flying mount now, it’s excruciating and I can’t believe I used to think it was quick. I would guess that what Arazi means is that people will be more inclined towards traveling elsewhere when it becomes even faster to get somewhere than it already is.

That could be true – I think it at least won’t hurt. I’m not sure it’ll really change much on its own, though; I think convenience is only a relatively small contributing factor to why people don’t branch out, and the bigger factor is that they simply know – or assume – that they won’t find fast, low-effort RP opportunities by standing around anywhere else. But, if people and guilds continue to host events and advertise RP opportunities elsewhere, the greater ease of getting out to them could help draw more people.

It could help more than I think it will. I know some people don’t like Dragonriding, and I know some people just can’t or can’t hardly do it at all for accessibility reasons, but – if you like Dragonriding, it makes travel in and of itself fun, which has definitely resulted in me traveling more on the Dragon Isles even when I’m not going anywhere to do anything. The minute it drops in the old world, I’m going to stop making progress on anything because I’ll be busy touring each and every zone on my dragon.

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I really wish we had the ability to hop shards more easily. We’ve learned to form groups to get around this problem, but groups have cap limits and run aground of the nature of walk-up RP because it adds a barrier for entry.

In comparison, SWTOR had sharding but there was a drop-down option in the map that allowed you to see how many shards the city you were in had, which one you were in, and allowed you to “hop” provided that the destination shard wasn’t already full. This made meeting up with friends and guildies easy, and also finding open RP in general by hopping into a more populated shard.

I really wish WoW added this feature, as it would make it much easier for players to find one another. It also would make it easier for players who experience lag in capital cities to remain in smaller shards so their computer doesn’t choke.

As is, sharding is handled automatically and we’re auto-shuttled around based on whatever population parameters that are set by Blizzard. It’s a very “Papa Knows Best” mentality and players are left scrambling to figure out how to get around it vs. having a choice.

In other words, looking forward to the goblin being gone, but we’ll be fighting this battle again down the road with something else unless sharding changes.

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I don’t know why Horde keep hanging out in that tiny pub around a bunch of non-rp’ers. You know you can move, right? xD Start going back to XR

roleplayers were there first, until pvp weeniswads showed up and started being obnoxious

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Imagine roleplaying on a roleplaying server

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I’d love to see a trend of folks going elsewhere to RP. As it is, the Valley of Honor has turned into more of an OOC social/PvP zone these days anyway. I remember when Cata herded all of us into our respective capitals and deleted the portals, but now it’s super easy to go to other places again.

Might be nice to see folks dust off good ol’ Thunder Bluff or something! :panda_face: :handshake: :cow:

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Thunder Bluff would be my vote, too! Very cozy.

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Plus it’s super simple to get to! BFA intro done once, then just a simple matter of taking the portal to Zandalar and then to Thunder Bluff!

I wish that Bilgewater Port had Trade Chat, as well as a phased, no Naga and Murloc rave-party Echo Islands.

Heck, let’s push Thunder Bluff and Dilfvermoon as the new RP sites and leave the PvP goon-squads and off-server streamers to eat each other for attention they crave.

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I vote for burning Orgrimmar to the ground so there’s no choice in the matter

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I mean, going off topic, I’d love to see, with the Fractured Timeline stuff, potential futures of the Capital Cities.

Orgrimmar, flooded with Demons and Fel-Fire from where the Warlocks within The Drag did rise up, just as feared, due to being able to corrupt and convert the Shattered Hand rogues watching them to their side, and Fel-versions of the Horde prepare a gateway for
a great General of the Legion to invade our world and finish the final siege of Azeroth … and possibly our reality, if we don’t put a stop to it, and the Fel-corrupted Horde Champions who protect the ritual sites.

Thunder Bluff, the mesas riddled with great fissures and unexploded shells, the land around them covered with the bodies of Men, Elves, Orcs and Tauren, where Tauren civilians cower and pray to the ancestors as battle-mad Alliance attackers and beleaguered Horde defenders play out the final moments of the ‘War-World’ timeline, and its up to the players to stop this insanity.

Stormwind, full of Mecha-Gnomes attempting to ‘De-Curse’ the city and its inhabitants, regardless of their will, while a variant of Odyn looks on and commends the High King of the Mecha-Gnomes for his work on ‘restoring’ Odyn’s prized soldiers to their rightful place and stature. Its a race like the Stratholme Level in the Warcraft III RTS, where we have to find and evacuate as many civilians as we can, while the Mecha-Gnomes are converting people as fast as they can, and every converted civilian becomes a hostile Iron Vyrkul that will join the periodic waves of Mechanised enemies sent to stop us.

Ironforge, flooded and the scene of a last desperate stand of the Dwarves and Gnomes against an ascendant Queen Azshara, who melted all the glaciers across the world and raised the sea level, along with the powers of the Tidestone to make even more water, and now there’s Old God corrupted Elementals rising from the submerged lava, Old God servants raiding the Dwarves’ armories for prizes and the juvenile High King of the Dwarves desperately trying to hold out behind a barrier of Arcane and Light magic, with the last few survivors of the Dwarves and Gnomes, and he needs us to buy time for their last few mages to teleport them to somewhere safe … if there even is somewhere safe anymore.

Silvermoon, awash in Void horrors, berserk Ren’dorei and maddened Amani Trolls and Withered, with Lor’themar and Thalyssa trying to guide the last few Sin’dorei and Shal’dorei in the city to relative safety at the Sunwell. Clearing pockets of Elves who have managed to survive, pushing back Ren’dorei assassins, killing Faceless Generals and finally attempting to stop a Void-possessed Valeera, who warns us that even if we stop her, the ‘Twin Moons of Madness’ will not stop until all the Children of Elune are united under the living flesh-banners of the Old Gods, and we see Void-empowered Alleria and Veressa slowly stalked towards us, radiating Void Energy that is actively corrupting and devouring stone, corpse and construct alike, before we are pulled away by the Bronzes.

The Exodar, where the Draenei are locked in a bitter civil war where the Draenei and their Kaldorei Allies are being slowly and relentlessly pushed back by Light-Bound Orcs, Men, Trolls and Dwarves, with High Exarch Garrosh and several prominent Lightforged Draenei spear-heading the charge. We have to topple the invaders, open up exits for the defenders to escape, and then engage in a knock-down drag-out brawl with the Half-Draenei Mag’har General and his massive, Light-infused crystal axe as Yrel and Velen duel with the Light all around us, their Marks of the Prophets flashing as the temporal dissonance of the two identical energy sources existing separately in the same instance is causing time and space to warp around the two combatants, before we manage to either kill or disable Garrosh and can lend our aid to Velen to defeat Yrel and try to extract her Mark of the Prophet from her, before the Draenei vessels above the shattered ruins of the Exodar begin glassing the island rather than risk the heresy of their Great Leader being defeated by the ‘heretic prophet’.

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A multiverse of madness series of dungeons and scenarios would be just the kind of thing that would make a future timewalking week really stick out. Who wouldn’t want to visit a world where the absence of Arthas’ scourge led to a Quel’thalas invasion or choosing sides in a decade’s long war between Turalyon and Alleria?

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I nominate Crossroads as the new RP hub for the Horde.

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New? Old? Again? Back in my day…