Cross-Realm Zones.

[Ziarre]

Another thing to keep in mind is only persistently low-population zones will be 'shared,' and they'll be keeping an eye out to 'un-share' any that become too populated.

[Slickrock]

This is a bad idea...

As already mentioned, if the shared zone is one that contains a rare, you have multiple times the competition now.

Also.. gathering. Now one botter can mess it up for people from multiple servers at once.

[Ellaran]

They're only doing this for lower-level zones that are typically pretty empty, at the moment. High-level zones and ones that are typically busy like Sholazar Basin and the Cataclysm zones are exempt. It also looks like it works so that the more people are on your server, the fewer people from other servers are put in, likely there's going to be a cap on how many people will be mixed.

Personally I'm excited, it gets lonely and depressing going through places like Feralas and Silithus without seeing another player for 2+ hours.

This is a bad idea...

As already mentioned, if the shared zone is one that contains a rare, you have multiple times the competition now.

Also.. gathering. Now one botter can mess it up for people from multiple servers at once.

Resource nodes respawn faster when more people are in a zone and gathering stuff. Anyone who bots might be overwhelmed and there'll be plenty for the non-botters.

[Galaxy]

I'm not sure how I feel about this...

[Ziarre]

Oh yeah...not to mention leveling through Hellfire is like going through a ghost town. Silence forever, unless someone's trolling Kazzak.

[Yuku]

I'm not sure if this going be really good or turn for the worst.
Good: I can stop being bugged to lv new toons on other servers just to hang with friends
Bad: Got some bad pet grievers that I prefer not to spread to others >.< their bad enough bugging my server hunters!

[Kurasu]

I'm going to agree on the 'Not too happy with this idea'. For one thing, I *like* going through zones where there aren't people. Exploration is fun, and if there's no one else around, I'm comfortable with that. Most of the quests nowadays are made for soloing. In fact, Blizzard has outright *stated* that they are making questing easier for people to do solo.

So with that in mind... why make it so that areas have more people? It's not because of elite areas needing groups. If people are lonely, then there are always friends one can chat with. Chatting with strangers isn't all that common in any area. Is it meant to encourage stranger-chatting? I'd think there's easier ways to get that going. I can see this being useful for RP realms, but a lot of basic PVE areas don't really have the need to fill it out. So really, my biggest confusion here is: what will it add to the leveling experience?

[Rower]

When I level, I hate seeing other players around me. In RL I sometimes need time all alone, and ingame too. Hope this is optional, since it could bring unwanted lag to my game experience.

[Bonita]

I honestly like questing by myself and not seeing other people lol. I level alts to get away from people haha. Playing on a dead realm makes that perfect for me though I can see how this can make others happy. Am moving to a med pop realm in a couple weeks though so I guess Im going to have a chance to get used to having competition for quests before MoP

[Ana]

I honestly like questing by myself and not seeing other people lol. I level alts to get away from people haha. P

I'm not sure how I feel about this...

¨
^
This .
could not agree more with these two

[Ziarre]

"We are also able to split over-populated zones and will be testing this new technology on the Pandaren starting area (turtle zone)."

As someone who keenly remembers struggling to get my death knight's quests done amidst the swarm of other death knights at the beginning of Wrath...Oh. My. God. Yes. Make this happen.

[Meggers]

Drat, I'm probably one of the few on a PVP realm.

[Royi]

It would be wise of them to offer two options to a player.

(If anyone has played SWTOR, they have different "instances" of the worlds, at least at launch anywho, (eg Korriban 1, Korriban 2, Korriban 3))

Perhaps have it where a character can either toggle on cross realms or toggle off cross realms (like a pvp flag). That way if you're bored and want to quest with people around you, you can flip to "on" and it'll reload the zone or something.

If you want to be left alone, you can set it to "off" and then be on your empty server alone.


just a compromise for those for and against this (even though i'm all for it)

[Worba]

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFINALLY

So sick of outdoor content being dumbed down and nerfed because 99.9% of the playerbase is capped and off raiding.

I was asking for an LFD for outdoor (group) quests back in 3.0, but this will be even better.

Now maybe they can get back to adding some outdoor content that's somewhat challenging. Here's hoping...

[Meggers]

Didn't they say it was only a select pool of servers? Like low pops?

[Sasrei]

Hmm im at the fence about this.. wonder if chat will become barrens chat all over again.

What id like is to be able to trade Boes cross server with a real id friend. Thats for sure something id love to do.

[Worba]

Didn't they say it was only a select pool of servers? Like low pops?

Even still - something > nothing.

[Vephriel]

I miss the time in Vanilla when you could travel the world, and no matter which zone you trekked through, you could always find other people questing or journeying the roads. I loved it, it made the world feel expansive and populated. I'm very excited for this idea since I love the thought that it could bring some of that back, just the sense of encountering people out in the world, the reason that this game is an MMO and not a solo exploration game.

I'm not saying I constantly want people everywhere, I like solitude sometimes as well, but for the past couple of expansions the majority of the world has grown less and less busy as people reach the level cap and stay clustered in the major cities, and most of the time when you're on an alt you're practically by yourself in a zone.

I can't express how excited I am for this.

[Slickrock]

And I like the concept.. but..

Botters WILL be a problem. Despite the spawn-rate of nodes going up with more people in a zone, a bot traveling at 600% speed underground and through mountains is going to beat you to the nodes.

However, if the zones they merge are low enough, perhaps it won't be a problem, as the demand there is low enough to not interest the botters.

[Miacoda]

I miss the time in Vanilla when you could travel the world, and no matter which zone you trekked through, you could always find other people questing or journeying the roads. I loved it, it made the world feel expansive and populated. I'm very excited for this idea since I love the thought that it could bring some of that back, just the sense of encountering people out in the world, the reason that this game is an MMO and not a solo exploration game.

I'm not saying I constantly want people everywhere, I like solitude sometimes as well, but for the past couple of expansions the majority of the world has grown less and less busy as people reach the level cap and stay clustered in the major cities, and most of the time when you're on an alt you're practically by yourself in a zone.

My thoughts exactly.
I got pulled into WoW by how the world actually feel like a world, and other players really contribute to that. I love seeing other people in zones, even if I don't talk to them.

Also, I love active general chats. XD