Sharding being necessary to create the illusion of a populated world that they have made every effort to encourage people not to explore.
It’s not one thing or another. This was the obvious and well cautioned inevitable result of WoWs focus on instanced content over the overworld. It killed the server. Warmode can’t replace the server except to try to intice more people to attempt a lesser version of a game mode that no longer exists except at very specific times.
Sharding isnt done to create an “illusion” or anything like that. It’s mostly done to lessen the load on the servers.
Server shards are determined based on location, i.e where the data centers for those servers are (US West, US Central, US East, Brazil, Australia, etc.)
Servers that share a similar location are placed in what are known as “battlegroups”. You’ll only see players from servers in your own battlegroup out in the world unless you are invited by a player in a different battlegroup.
Here’s a list of the different battlegroups:
https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Americas_region_realm_list_by_datacenter
It’s done like this so that you aren’t connecting to a data center across the country which would result in higher ping/lag and vice versa.
The problem is, because of sharding, it’ll make the world feel dead, especially in War Mode.
There’s two ways they could go about fixing the whole sharding issue while still lessening the load on servers:
1. Dynamic Shard Merging for War Mode: While in War Mode, the system could dynamically merge shards based on population density, especially in zones where PvP is expected (any of the new expansion zones). For example, if a battlegroup’s player population number is low, it could merge with another battlegroup temporarily.
2) Battlegroup Shard Selection Option in War Mode: Allow players in War Mode the option to switch to a different battlegroup shard. This would allow players to look for WPvP elsewhere without needing to be invited.
Easy fixes. War Mode would feel so much more alive if either of these were solutions were added. I’ll say this again, it isn’t a War Mode issue; it’s a sharding issue.
I agree remove warmode, stay in your dungeons if you don’t want to have a go. Also allow same factions to fight if they are not in the same group
That’s not exactly true. Yes, it can do that and that’s one of the things they bragged about to sell the idea, because prior to sharding there was a lot of crashing the server by piling up mammoth mounts in Org. But they were staring down the barrel at an overworld becoming increasingly empty. The ability to dynamically merge and separate “shards” to stabilize the population at something resembling optimal was great. Way better than coming up with new races or classes all the time for people to level through the obsolete zones.
Now they don’t care if the game is empty. They don’t direct people toward zones to increase a feeling of massively multiplayerness, you can pick the single player experience you prefer with chromie time. The main hubs are combined servers to make those places feel populated and the hardware can handle it. Shards are useless.
That’s what it does do, the problem is there’s too much of it. There’s also the other, smaller forms of sharding they do such as when you choose Chromie Time. All of these different “micro” shards add up eventually and makes the world feel dead.
Main hubs are still for the most part your home server. If you’re seeing other servers, it’s likely other players who were invited to your shard by someone else on your server.
For example, if I’m in Dornogal, I’ll mostly see other players from Bleeding Hollow. If I’m on my Alliance Hunter on Sargeras, I’ll mostly see other players from Sargeras.
If I get invited to a group by my friend sitting in Dornogal, who’s on Wyrmrest Accord, if I accept the invite, I’ll be sharded into his Dornogal and see players on Wyrmrest Accord while I’m in the group.
Maybe on RP servers.
Now, the technology that “combines” realms is the same as the technology that shards them, but Blizzard has a special name for it-
(From Wowpedia-)
“[Cross-realm zones] (CRZ) is very similar to sharding, but is designed to prevent under -crowding. If a zone on a realm has very few players, the game automatically moves players from multiple realms into the same “instance” of the zone (effectively a shard) to make it “feel active and alive.””
No, this is on every server. I forgot to include this into my original response here:
But the other servers you might see are ones that were linked/merged to your server specifically. If you scroll down to the “All Servers” page on the forums here:
https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/
You’ll see a list of servers and will notice some servers share the same forum section. That’s because those servers are linked. Typically, they were lower population realms who were merged with other lower pops. to help the server economy before everything was cross realm like it is now.
I remember you saying you had an Alliance on Firetree. Therefore, if you’re seeing players from other servers, its likely from these servers:
Drak’Tharon, Firetree, Malorne, Rivendare, Spirestone, and Stormscale
This is normal. These are servers that are connected to Firetree. It still falls under, “home server” technically. You’re not going to be seeing anyone else from different servers in your main hub unless they’re invited. In my case, Bleeding Hollow, it isn’t linked to another server because the server population was large enough at the time, and still is, to where it didn’t need to be linked to another server. I only see people from Bleeding Hollow in my main hubs. It all depends on which servers youre linked to.
In your case here, its the servers I mentioned that are linked with yours.
That’s not what CRZ is and I don’t see why you are dismissing that like it’s still not a thing.
Its not about forcing interest. When pvp servers were live, anything went in contested zones. It was a risk to be there, and you needed friends to help many of the times you were out in the open world. This was a good SOCIAL aspect of the game, getting friends, guilds to help which would lead to good fights and back and forth battles.
Currently wow is destroying the social aspect of the game with all the solo modes catering to the pve crowd, which has now infected pvp with solo/sbg. While I love wpvp and have always enjoyed it when it happens, the biggest part of the game is socializing with other players and having that sense of community.
Wpvp was a lot better when it was better to grab friends and go fight. War mode ruins this with all the safe zones and being safe entirely. Why get help. It removes the need to call for aid.
In the end some of you do disagree and thats ok. We all have what we like, and dont like. Some of ya gonna say ITS FINE… when its not, but thats how you feel about it. The thread kinda speaks for itself in that war mode has become worse and blizz is dropping the ball hard on pvp and wpvp in general. The potential for what could be is staggering, but I doubt anything will change soon. I’m hoping we can get some really sweet changes in the future and get a little love for pvp/wpvp and maybe pvp servers and or an adjusted war mode that livens things up a bit.
I don’t understand what it is that I’m supposedly dismissing, can we recap and you tell me what it is that you think I’m dismissing here?
My argument is that War Mode isn’t the problem and isn’t what’s killed WPvP, it’s sharding. Your argument after that was:
I explained to you the reason why sharding is in place, which is to lessen the server load. I went over how it’s done, through locations of data centers and how servers are placed in battlegroups.
You went on to say that’s what it can do, but no, that’s what it does, theres just too much of it. This is what’s killing WPvP, there’s too much sharding. It makes the world feel empty because you’ll have a variety of shards that are either empty with no one to kill, shards where there’s too many of the enemy faction and none of your own faction to help, and occasionally shards where it’ll be a pretty good balance.
You went on to say that main hubs are combined servers, and for the most part, you’d be right if you aren’t counting the servers your realm are merged with. I gave you a list of which realms are merged. The reason those realms are merged are because of low server population, and to make those realms feel more alive, they’ve merged them, rightfully so or those servers would have had no economy.
https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Cross-realm_zones
I’m not sure where you’re going with this CRZ argument really. Once again, sharding is the thing killing WPvP, not War Mode.
See, this is where I’m confused. As I’ve pointed out many times, and others, you’re blaming War Mode for these things.
There were safe zones even before War Mode. Sanctuaries existed. Places with guards existed. People could opt out of a PvP server at any point after MoP introduced CRZ by getting invited by someone (or using the CRZ addon) on a PvE server.
You’re saying, “War Mode ruined the ‘grab friends and fight’ feel because it has safe zones and you can be safe!” but you’re still ignoring people did this before War Mode was even introduced.
An adjusted War Mode is something I could agree with, but not PvP servers because that ship has sailed long ago.
Fix the sharding, introduce incentives for people to keep War Mode enabled instead of just for enabling it, and implement more WPvP systems and events.
Only specifically where I make the claim that sharding (as a technology) exists to create an illusion of an optimally populated overworld by merging underpopulated instances of a zone as well as the more commonly thought of splitting (though I’d argue the merging is the more important feature). You basically acted like that wasn’t a thing and when I cited references you hand waved it to talk about main hubs, which were really a very small part of this conversation about the overworld (and still highlights blizzards need to populate their dying world).
I mean to be fair I only disagreed with you about sharding being an “illusion” to make the world feel more populated as you put it. Blizzard’s merging of shards to maintain player density does make the world feel populated, but that doesn’t mean the primary purpose of sharding is to ‘trick’ players.
All I was saying was that the primary purpose of sharding (not necessarily the merging aspect) is mostly done to lessen the server load, which for the most part, it does do that. The problem is, it does it too much and is sometimes unnecessary.
I feel like for the most part, me and you both agree that sharding does hurt WPvP, right? Am I getting that right? Because if that’s the case, I don’t get why you’re blaming War Mode for the sharding. Sharding is only hurting War Mode and killing WPvP. These complaints of War Mode being dead, while some people are saying otherwise, is just a case of bad sharding, not War Mode being a bad game mode.
It has it’s flaws, which most people can agree on, but PvP servers aren’t going to change that, because Blizzard had this sharding technology even when PvP servers were a thing (MoP-Legion).
Yes however the contested zones it was a huge free for all, and you needed to go there to quest and do things, which created environments for pure chaos and rampage. War mode completely eliminates any kind of situation like that because 99% of the players just choose to not even have it on. On a pve server you were safe in those contested zones, on pvp servers you were not safe and thats what was so great.
Adjusted war mode at minimum would be ok honestly. Like having uber assaults with huge rewards will draw in players. ( you know the pve crowd gonna cry about that ) Like having a city become attackable, crazy situations and also some npc balance if one side becomes too powerful. Then if a defender, defends or retakes the city it becomes safe again for an hour or two.
Everyone here can agree its crap.
Then this invalidates PvP servers and any semblance of balancing them.
There’s still a sense of danger and chaos in WPvP though. Sure, a majority of the WoW player base doesn’t have War Mode enabled but let’s not pretend that many people on PvP servers were interested in WPvP. Many people on PvP servers weren’t there for PvP reasons — some were there because that’s where their friends or guild were, some didn’t know what they were fully getting themselves into, and others just lost interest in WPvP because of the horrible faction imbalance that almost every PvP server eventually fell into. Sthis makes a fine point here:
Maybe the faction imbalance might’ve been different for you because Emerald Dream, I believe, was one of the balanced servers, but for 90% of existing PvP servers, there was a gross faction imbalance. And if you’re saying that you don’t see anyone in War Mode (supposedly) then it just goes to show a majority of people on Emerald Dream weren’t there for the WPvP anyway.
In War Mode, you’re not safe either. You have to be in a rested area to turn off War Mode, and in the same sense with CRZ in MoP on PvP servers, you could be safe if you just had someone on a PvE server invite you to their group or used the CRZ addon.
An adjusted War Mode, yes, exactly. Fix the sharding, merge some of the battlegroups on servers so that the world doesn’t feel empty (especially for those on the smaller pop. servers), add incentives for keeping War Mode enabled, and some more War Mode events.
I’m curious though what you mean by “having a city become attackable.” Cities are already attackable, are you saying force people in cities who have War Mode disabled to be attackable as well or something? What is this about a defender and a city becoming “safe” again? Is it going to disrupt PvE players who don’t want to engage in PvP?
Because if thats the case, from what you’re describing here, it sounds like what you miss about PvP servers was the ability to target players who weren’t interested in PvP. To me, it seems like your nostalgia for PvP servers stems from the expense of people who specifically weren’t interested in PvP content.
Yes.
The argument I have been consistently trying to make is that War Mode isnt really the problem, but is an inadequate solution for the symptoms of the actual disease which is the shift away from consistent servers (sharding and CRZ). So, I agree with people who say that pvp realms are better insofar as I think that the realm as an institution is sacrosanct to the genre. Sharding and CRZ undermined the realm (as all other developments undermined the overworld) and at that point, why get repeatedly pk’d for some random people who aren’t part of your consistent community? Of course you want to be able to turn warmode off. Hence warmode. Shards and CRZ are like an overworld PUG. You might wipe 10 times on a boss with your guild but not with a pug. That’s why Warmode is necessary. And why it’s inferior to pvp realms. The realm is the important part. You need to restore the realm as an institution… But they won’t. Because they need to have the ability to manipulate player psychology with the ability to control the population of zones.
PvP servers were much more active and fun.
I get what you’re saying, I know realms gave WoW a better sense of community so to speak, but you’re overlooking a slew of problems and why Blizzard moved away from realms in the first place. This shift to sharding and CRZ was due to server population imbalances. They couldn’t just ignore dying servers. Many realms, especially PvP realms, suffered from severe population issues, which Blizzard addressed by implementing sharding and CRZ. This wasn’t done to manipulate players, but to ensure that the zones felt active and engaging.
From Vanilla-WotLK, the player base continued to grow rapidly, which is why Blizzard opened so many realms in the first place (to support this large population of players, I believe it was 12M active subs?). However, no body anticipated the drop in active players following WotLK. When that happened, Blizzard was suddenly left with a ton of low-population servers that could no longer sustain a sense of community on their own. CRZ and sharding were developed to address this. These developments allowed players on those servers to still feel like they were part of an active world. Again, wasn’t done to “trick” players or “manipulate” them. It was necessary, both to improve server performance and make zones feel populated.
That being said, you’re arguing for the return of PvP realms, but you’re overlooking the downsides that came with them like severe faction imbalances. If Blizzard were to bring back PvP servers while keeping War Mode as it is now, how would they implement this with CRZ and sharding in place?
Would players on PvP servers be able to play with people outside of their realm? If they could, it undermines the very sense of community you want to restore, as they’d still be using CRZ or sharding to access other realms. But if players on PvP servers were locked into their own communities, it would just lead back to the same faction imbalance issues that PvP servers had in the past. And that’s without considering that many players are now used to flexible PvP options that wouldn’t require them to pay 15$ for a realm transfer.
Furthermore, if War Mode players could be sharded into PvP realms, what purpose would PvP realms serve? War Mode already allows players to opt into PvP anywhere in the world. Reintroducing PvP realms while moving away from sharding would create so many logistical issues you’re not even thinking about and it wouldn’t solve the problems that sharding and CRZ were meant to address.
An improved War Mode is the only thing you’re going to get, not PvP servers. Blizzard isn’t going to entertain that idea anymore. Start advocating for additional incentives, events, and for them to fix sharding to get that sense of community you’re looking for.
I’m not really arguing for the return of PvP realms. I’m arguing the merits of the realm as an institution. Restore the concept of a realm. Cram a bunch together now that the hardware can handle a lot more people. Then let those realms become communities again. Get rid of the sharding all together and you can keep Warmode toggling because there would be a sense of community to motivate people to turn it on. You wouldn’t need to fix rewards all that much.