Question on server sharding

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1

Ok, so I am now focused on just mount farming each day after resets. So originally I was:
WoW1 - Area52
WoW2 - Area52
WoW3 - Area52

Now that I am farming mounts, this is my setup:
WoW1 - The Scryers (RP)
WoW2 - Area 52
WoW3 - Sentinels (RP)

So if I log in in say Oribos they all log in on different shards. I then head to say Vale to farm Rei Lun - I get there and again, they are all on different shards. So I send an invite to the other 2 (doesn’t matter which toon sends invite) and then they are all sharded together.

Here is the problem - When I leave group with all 3, WoW2 goes back to his shard by himself, however WoW1 and WoW3 stay on the same shard. The only way to fix this is log out on either WoW1 or WoW3 for 15mins+, log back in and then WoW1 and WoW3 are on different shards.

Why is this happening? This is the opposite of why I just paid $25 to transfer my toon. I wanted them all to be on their own shards/servers all the time, until a group invite. Why are those servers connected like this? Maybe I misunderstood that they are completely different.

Is there a better low population server to move to for either of my RP toons that this wont happen on?

Thanks in advance.

2

With the old zones, CRZ puts a lot more realms together than current content. WoW2 gets back to it’s own shard because it’s not RP. The others stay on the same shard because they are RP and there isn’t a lot of players in that zone.

As far as I know, it doesn’t matter what low-pop server you choose. As long as they are the same type (RP or Regular) you will likely stay on the same shard.

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What you are experiencing isn’t exactly sharding. Sharding is what happens when the population in a specific zone/area is high. A new shard is created to handle additional players. They are technically on the same realm, just not the same shard.

What you are describing are Cross Realm Zones, or CRZs. That is when the same zone/group of zones is used by multiple realms. This allows older zones that might not get much traffic to be shared by other realms, giving it a chance to feel a little more populated.

When ungrouping the characters should return to their home realm automatically. If that isn’t happening it might be worth reporting as a bug to have our QA team take a look.

That isn’t really how modern World of Warcraft works. Realms often share particular zones, not including realms that are connected.

Not all them. The realms that are CRZ’d for specific zones are of the same type. So RP and RP realms may be CRZ’d, but a regular realm and a RP realm wouldn’t be. They are also specific realms, so if realm X, Y, and Z all share their Barrens, you won’t find X, Y, G and H sharing it the next day, it should always be X, Y, and Z. Note, our realm engineers may decide to change the configuration at any time, but usually there would be cause to do so.

Low population realms are usually the ones that will see CRZ more often, since many of their old content zones tend to be low population.

I’m sorry, there isn’t really a list of which realms may be CRZ’d for a specific zone. That isn’t generally how game play was intended to work.

If the characters you have are usually on a their own realm while ungrouped, in a specific zone, and it only changes when you group, then that has to do with Cross Realm Grouping, not sharding or CRZ and probably should be reported as a bug.

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Thank you very much for breaking this down. Really appreciate you taking the time (you too Ruffle)

Can you move this thread to Bug Report?

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No, I’m afraid not. We don’t generally cross post in other forums, so once I or another Support Forum Agent here has posted in a thread it usually cannot be moved.

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