Since returning for 8.1 to level up some alts, it seems the game has become barely playable. I can barely go three minutes before mid-combat the pack of mobs I’ve pulled disappear and are replaced with a new shard. Worse, I cannot reach the end of any escort quest before being resharded, which each time causes the NPC to disappear completely, appearing at no stretch along the route previous, forcing me to abandon the quest and relog to make it reappear at the start… only to then fail in the same way later again, disappearing as mob positions reshuffle about halfway down the path.
I’m not playing with Warmode on. There’s not a single other player in sight either way. Why am I being reshuffled so often? It’s hardly worth pulling more than one mob at a time for sheer risk of getting no credit for the nearly-completed fight.
Even at a mere 50/54 ping, the GCD visually refreshes almost a half-second before I can actually do anything with it, either. Has this always been the case, and I’ve merely forgotten, or is this, too, new?
Edit: Irl location is California, which has never been an issue before. This issue occurs predominantly in depopulated questing areas. I usually average 31-33 local/world ping in dungeons with no responsiveness issues. Even at that rare time doing a late-night BG at 100 ping, there’s still no visual latency, such as to mount cast time beyond the tenth of a second stated, whereas even at ~50 ms ping in these cases there’s about half to almost a whole second’s extra delay before mounting or looting.
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I’ve seen multiple people say this especially recently but I’ve never seen it happen myself or even seen it happen to them.
How can I replicate it to better understand the problem?
If you could be as specific as possible I would love to test it because I am quite sure they stated you should never be phased while in combat anywhere unless you join or leave a group, and still people report it happens to them.
More information would be great either way! Thanks!
Include things like your realm, your irl location, and specific zones or quests it happens on repeatedly.
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I’m not certain how it should be replicated. It’s only happened on a few of my alts, who have each been questing in the now-depopulated areas along the BfA zones’ main quest paths, yet it happens to them consistently. Returning to Boralus and then returning from there has only once kept it from resharding for more than 20 minutes, but once shuffled, it went back to happening over-frequently. The visual latency (as the ping did not change, but responsiveness – such as time to summon mount, equip gear, loot, and the time after the GCD timer spun to completion before I can actually act – was affected), too, was reduced that time until the rapid reshuffling returned.
I have one alt stuck on Flynn’s escort quest, and another stuck on the one in Stormsong escort quest leading to the staff. Flynn’s half way through the little spin about the lizard cave on average. The other gets just past the first little bridge, typically.
I’d never heard that reshuffling should never happen in combat, as sensible as that sounds. When BfA first released, I’d twice lost progress on WANTED: quests due to be reshuffled in combat, which was particular irritating when they were already dead in the shard I was shuffled into, and several times more in typical combat. It was remotely as common as this, and so I thought it was a mere bug and mild inconvenience on the whole. But this…
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I have personally been in combat (solo, not in a group) with the rare spawn Defiler on the farm in Arathi (the 120 version) and been sharded away from it. Everything around me phased out and a bunch of fresh mobs I hadn’t aggro’d yet phased in. This is just the most recent time it’s happened to me. Happened a lot more often in Legion.
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You may have been susceptible to a number of things that has caused this. Incursions, popular WQs, raid groups disbanding and players falling back to their home realms, etc, affecting the population of the zone enough to split it out.
But you should never be phased while doing a escort quest. Ever. There’s code that can be added to make that possible. Even if it means phasing the individual player into their own instance while on the quest.
sharting is a cost cutting measure not a feature.
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I notice it A LOT when leveling. Seeing mobs just phasing in and out randomly and this weird lag that has nothing to do with connection. I don’t remember noticing it as much before 8.1 but I could be misremembering.
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+1 for the character name.
Had a good Sunday chuckle.
Not sure why some people find it hard to believe. How many times have you been gathering ores or herbs just for them to fade away mid mining.
Result of sharding.
Makes sense the mobs would do it too, although I’ve never had it personally happen to me in combat.
And the lag issue is definitely new post 8.1
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Sharding is horrible in my estimation. WOW is an MMORPG and sharding takes a steamy crap on the concept of Massively Multiplayer. It kills immersion in that you never see people from your own server, your friends, your guildies. You only see strangers and different strangers every moment during your gaming experience. It forms a disconnect and I know it seems like it doesn’t in the way you still see other players. But that’s not the same thing. Sharding hurts the game more than it helps - I believe who sharding truly helps is Blizzard and not the actual players of their game. “We don’t want our servers to crash.” Then get new ones. How many million/billions of dollars is this company worth? Too many. Sharding makes their job easier - that’s all that matters to them it seems.
“You think you don’t need new servers, but you do.”
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I’ve only had this happen to me once. Pulled a quest mob, started fighting, got sharded and it vanished. Had to start over.
What does happen to me constantly is obnoxious changes in weather and time of day. I’ll be in the Seal and it’s raining outside. Step outside and it’s no longer raining. Go three more feet it’s raining. Three more feet, it’s not raining. Sometimes it even switches from day to night and back as I’m walking along. Real immersive, Blizz. Maybe tie time and weather to the player not the shard? I dunno.
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Bring back my server community. It was nice knowing that this tank was reliable, and you wanted in his groups when he advertised a raid forming. And that this other guy was a troll who would ninja ya and the entire server had him black listed
Miss that stuff
OP’s main here. The issue is occuring in different ways even on my main in more populated shards. Until rebooting my computer and flushing the dns cache (relogging and restarting client both had no effect), I was literally unable to loot, sell items, buy items, or cash quests. I could still mount, though with delay, and fight, though with irritating amounts of delay, but cashing quests would give the gold/item acquisition method but actually acquire neither (removing the gold ? only from my screen, not the minimap or world map), and selling items would say how much gold I got from the sale but wouldn’t actually gain gold or remove the items. This is getting ridiculous.
This has happen to me a few times, And its not been something i have been able to replicate.
Its only really been happening since legion as far as i can recall, but rare enough that i cannot see any reason on my side. But often enough to become annoying.
Been phased out of world bosses a few times now, and other world quest bosses a fair number.
Going back and doing legion world quests, the only one there and 10 seconds into one i will get phased out of the fight.
A few times to be stuck looking at a dead world quest, with no one about as far as i can tell otherwise.
Got phased into a completely empty Argus twice, and dalaran 3 times as well.
Only recently i have gone from a empty zone(no players insight) doing a world quest in voldun, into what was full. 30 horde sitting around waiting to kill the limited quest monsters.
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It’s not a thing. This is just a contrived post by the never-sharders to try to get them to reverse sharding for rp and for classic.
It’s like kryptonite to these people. The game is ruined if sharding happens.
i have had this happen a few times, most recent was in Darkshore. People who have not had it most likely have just had it happen to them while traveling and didn’t notice. CRZ is terrible and if they can’t do it right they have no business having it in game.
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I had a group finder listed for a rare in Arathi. Getting no bites, I left it up while I went ahead and pulled (as bear, so no problems surviving, just would take a long time). When I had it almost dead, I delisted. A short time later it disappeared, before it died, so no credit.
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I don’t mind sharding. Until 8.1 I’d had no issues with sharding. I mind being unable to play the game due to what seems like a bug. I’d posted in technical support, but had received no way to solve it and wanted to see if my issue was isolated.
I prefer PvP balance sharding over a lack of it.
I prefer sharding such that I can actually kill my quest mobs.
I prefer sharding such that I’m not lagging for sheer player count.
I just don’t like sharding going off in combat or mid-quest, which was very rare for me until 8.1, at which point it’s been incessant.
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Surprised you’ve NEVER had this happen to you. afaik sharding shenanigans have happened to everyone, you sound very lucky.
At this point people have just learned to deal with it, that’s sharding it’s BfA, and doesn’t happen often enough to be super concerned … but it seems like the op is having it happen a whole lot more than typical.
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Had it yesterday on the worldboss in AH. We nearly had it killed. Poof, half the raid was sharded to a fresh boss…
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