It happens to me every week on several different characters. It has got to the point I dont enjoy playing anymore. Whats the point in fighting a boss to almost dead to be phased out, or plant a seed almost to 100% to get phased out, or dream almost to purple to get phased out. It’s too much. once in a while ok stuff happens, but 5+ times a week on different characters and im on scarlet crusade a fairly dead rp server. So far it has only gotten worse.
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I love getting moved from a full shared during a bloom to an empty one.
/eyeroll
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Yes. especially in ED and Span. Ill be ice fishing, killing assault rares or even doing community soup and bam sharded. I was part of a group that was like just a few points from a leggo soup last week and half of us suddenly got sharded to an uncommon soup. It made me ANGRY
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Probably very lucky! Got sharded while in a 30+ man raid group doing Big Dig right before it started.
I’ve been pushed between shards more since two(?) weeks ago than in the years since sharding exists put together. It’s happened more in the Emerald Dream zone than anywhere else but has also happened in different parts of Zarelek Caverns and Waking Shores as well as inside the Cobalt Assembly areas of Azure Span and even in Valdrakken. It happens with and without war mode on. My connected realm (Thorium-Brotherood/Farstriders/Silver-Hand) is normally cross-realm-zoned with other RP realms in war mode, but I’ve been having it shift me—and a friend when I was playing last week in a 2-person party—in-between both a “RP-Realms-Stuck-Together” CRZ and then a “just-my-connected-realms” shard. Sometimes it was between more than two shards. It was happening in both warmode and warmode-off, but I personally had it happening at a higher frequency in war-mode even though there’s significantly fewer players in it on the RP realms than without it off. This has been happening mostly during combat or when interacting with stuff, especially near dreamseeds. In war-mode, I also had it happen 3 times during the middle of the Zaqali Elders world boss fight on one day earlier last week when it was being egregiously bad. Now, I haven’t played in 4-ish days, so I’m not sure if the problem is still happening for me; however, I wasted 9 gigantic dreamseeds across a couple of days of being phased into other shards, so I stepped away from playing for a few days.
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Yes, it happened to me a couple of times during the Diablo crossover event, once right before it spawned and once after we had started.
It happened once after doing the siege event in Waking Shores when everyone flies over to kill the rare nearby that spawns. It was almost dead and then I got sharded to a layer with 2-3 people killing the rare and it was almost full health.
The other day I was running around Valdrakken using toys with a lot of other people, then I was sent to a shard with no one there, then a few seconds later to a shard where there were around 10 people.
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They seem to be tinkering with the sharding every week. A week or two ago we couldn’t keep our tent cities up in Vald because it was sharding everyone randomly every 45 minutes. The forced sharding out of a soup has been coming and going all expansion.
Sharding can be done quite a lot better. Take Guild Wars 2 sharding systems, as an example. Every zone has a list of shards. When a shard is open it tries to keep it full. If the newest shard is full, it makes a new empty shard to fill. It tries to place people into the oldest shard available, and maintains their shard position until they choose to leave the shard. When the newer shards stop filling, it give gives everyone in the dying shards an option to move to an older shard for a karma buff. Shards close with a 1 hour countdown.
Sharding shouldn’t just violently drag you around by the collar. It makes the game feel like buggy garbage.
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I think if they were tinkering with it they would have announced it because it’s extremely disruptive to gameplay.
This is originally how sharding worked when it was released in WoD. Now it’s just an absolute mess moving people who have a sort of “Seniority” (in terms of time spent in the zone) in a zone’s shard to a new shard.
It’s definitely gotten out of control and I feel something needs to be done about it sooner rather than later.
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I’ll be in the middle of fighting something then POOF.
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Unfortunately, it doesn’t just work that way anymore, my group of friends has now gotten used to not inviting someone to group while doing something because doing so frequently removes you from your shard. We still get careless sometimes, a few days ago (Sunday, I think) 3 friends of mine (same guild) were hunting rares in the gnoll area in Azure span, I was on an alt (different guild, same server group), also in Azure Span, having farmed gold WQs. I asked for an invite, they invited me, and suddenly no rares. They kicked me in the hopes it might put them back, but of course it didn’t. Most incidents like that have been at soup or things in the dream, though.
I wish I had payed more attention to whether the rares were up for me before I asked, I’m not really sure.
Ive seen this happen, until the horde defenders got wise and set up a couple of Dracthyr to knock back the lil jerk every time he made a beeline to the inn. It was amusing to watch him die repeatedly when his strategy failed.
As for issues with sharding, i mostly have it happen when im trying to get to an ore node or herb only to have it vanish before my eyes when i reach it.
Despawn? Sharding? IDK…
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I assume that’s what’s happening when you’re at the mailbox, or guild bank, and it just disappears and reappears, but most of the time it’s a very minor inconvenience.
I’ve posted this on Reddit before, I had this happen more than once while killing rares in Tyrhold. There’s literally no one around since no one does those rares anymore, not even when an elemental storm is up (especially on a low-pop server where all my Alliance alts are). I’m not uber geared so I clear packs of trash mobs around it, and it’s taking a good several minutes to whittle down the rare’s hp. I’ll have it down to under 10% and suddenly everything will phase around me, packs that I cleared will spawn on top of me, and the rare is back to 100%, and I have to start over.
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They adjust how sharding works almost every maintenance, they never mentioned when or why and probably never will.
I’ve definitely been sharded away from fighting enemies on both Classic and Retail and it is frustrating.
I been sharded doing pretty much anything. I get frustrated mostly when I’m hunting a rare and poof he’s gone or dead. I haven’t kept up with times but its annoying. It happens with all world bosses for me. I can be fighting and poof sharded I don’t get credit and have to try again. It’s annoying and normally it takes a lot for me to get annoyed.
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Yes, it happened to me recently during a Superbloom. Everything was going okay and suddenly I found myself and one other player very confused as he and everyone else poofed.
Then I checked the map and Mr. Big Tree was on the other path he walks. It was not fun but at least I was able to finish the event.
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I feel transparency on the subject should be used in this case because there seems to be a lot of upset, annoyed, angry customers who have experienced this and it is extremely disruptive to game play.
Pretty sure there are more who don’t visit the forums who experience this as well and are equally as frustrated.
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I tend to submit Bug Reports using the in-game feature instead of writing down specific events, but here’s a summation.
I’ve noticed/experienced the random sharding weirdness since Legion. Withered J’im was particularly horrible with it, but any of the world bosses were prime time for forced sharding even during combat with the boss.
During Dragonflight any of the world events are still the main place I notice it. While some of them seemed to sort themselves out over time, they still happen at random times. Community Feast and Researchers seem to be the worst, but even Dragonbane Keep and Superbloom are regular. I’ve had better luck staying on the same shard during Superblooms by being not grouped.
On 1-Feb, half of a 20-man raid was forced to a different shard during Researchers Under Fire. The Raid Leader had removed us from queue before the event started and we still had 20 people when the ‘WTF’ exclamations started.
And then you get Valdrakken. Last night I stayed on the same shard for four hours just sitting at the BS crafting table while this morning I was sharded six times between 0630 and 0700 doing the same thing.
I have a hard time deciding whether the frequency, whatever criteria are used, and the random nature is the worst part of the issue. If it happened on any sort of consistent basis I think the feedback would be much more focused and helpful to Blizzard to try to find and fix the underlying issue.
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Sometimes I’m just fishing and this happens.
My cast ends suddenly and the Islefin Dorado pool suddenly becomes something worthless.
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