sigh RP servers are suppose to not phase old zones and yet… another mass RP festival split over different shards.
2 Likes
Not even sure why it’s on right now? Maybe cause of the Kalimdor Cup? Ugh. I wish some of the devs would check ahead of these big events. Especially with ToA, we know they know that one exists, but last year I barely attended cause of this exact same issue.
2 Likes
I remember years ago when we had this problem for ToA a Blizzard rep actually came online and changed it so there would not be any phasing on RP realms in older content.
Those days are over.
Phasing to the DANGER ZONE!
How did the ToA people get the area ultimately unphased for their event? Tickets? Do they have to do that again every year?
Maybe tickets will just have to be something larger scale RP events do ahead of time from now on. Which sucks, but it’s better than getting up to an event you think you have figured out and then find out the devs have made further changes.
Can’t answer everything, I’m out of town/in school until 3/25/25 off and on as well but someone linked me this thread and I will answer what I can.
How did the ToA people get the area ultimately unphased for their event
coordinators/other representative party have a responsibility to contact the company ahead of time.
tickets?
Only if you want 5,729,987,628 automated responses on what sharding/phasing is lol. It’s better for people who are organizing the event to make contact instead of the whole community spamming a system that wastes ppls time 
every year
I can answer this pretty clearly re: the Gnome Run vs the Troll Run and you can relate it back to any other events 
Blizzard knows when the Gnome Run is because there is a now holiday in the game that tells them when it will be just the same as say, Brewfest.
Blizzard doesn’t know when the Troll Run will be unless I communicate that information because it’s a fan run event where it’s been held on different days in the past. the Gnome Run used to suffer from the same issues because even tho it was always on a Saturday in October sometimes it moved around and wasn’t a static date. ToA has the same weirdness with the first full Sun-Sat in August which could be the 1st or could be the 6th as the first day!
they know
I can’t speak for the company as I don’t work there but I think it’s important to remember that there’s a lot of fan made content of all varieties that they’re supporting all at once.
dev
Every time it comes up the idea that there’s some role play dev that KNOWS when all of the everyone’s events are across multiple RP realms are, AND that they are running around with a calendar of them? Plus finding them on their own, and the server needs by stalking their social media and discords for times, locations and dates is adorable to imagine. I don’t think that would be a human I think that would be 70 caffeinated elves in a trench coat? But man, they’d be amazing, and I’m wondering if they would come till my backyard tbh. I bet it would be a HUGE calendar that took up a wall with giant sticky notes of everything everyone is doing, lol! 
Oh, editing to add:
no phasing RP realms old content
(Grain of salt, I don’t work for Blizzard but I’m really good at breaking their servers so, lmao, here’s what I kinda understand about this: )
So, yes, RP realms don’t phase/shard in old zones if there’s only old content. People have a tendency to associate “old zones” with being 1:1 with “old content”. I think people kind of mistook it as a “Hand to Thrall once a zone isn’t current to an old expansion it won’t phase” promise because 7 years ago they gave examples of zones that currently weren’t going to shard, however the game now revisits old zones significantly more often.
Let me quote them: “ In general, however, our goal is to follow the general rule of thumb that RP realms do not shard, except in current-expansion zones, or when temporarily necessary to support gameplay” (basically variety of reasons or for events story) I think it comes down to sharing the realm with everyone who all have different interests. It’s an over oiled teeter-totter that could launch something across the park and into a tree at any moment for both sides tbh and I don’t envy the server team making these choices sometimes.
It will become kind of advantageous for event planners keep an eye on the in game calendar on the PTR as new things being added or moved can sometimes shuffle the schedule compared to on Live Side. Also, maybe look at some datamining for things that could crop up last second when it comes to phasing. I hate spoilers and know others do too, but, also, it’s a facet of “party planning” in an increasingly dynamic world with a fast paced patch schedule these days.
3 Likes