How I feel about Cross Realm Zones

[Sigrah]

I was bored at work today, so I decided to find a picture that describes what I think of Cross Realm Zones and make a funny demotivational style poster out of it. Enjoy

[Shadow]

His teeth scare me.

[Lisaara]

This made me LOL.

[Finduilas]

Everyone is talking about these Cross Realm Zones. I don't want to sound stupid, but did they introduce them on live yet? Did they introduce them on EU servers, too? And if they did, how does everyone seem to know he/she has crossed a realm zone? How do you notice if anyone is from a different server? Do they have a "I'm a stranger tag" or something? How can I know if I'm playing on MY server and not somewhere else? I know this might sound stupid, but I started work and really don't have much time left for wow now (if I'm lucky it's one hour during the workdays). So many of you seem to have problems with these zones, but I didn't find anything about them except old posts from the announcement back in may in the German forums. And I didn't notice anything strange while playing my lowbies or mains in different levels (level 16, 46 and my 85s too). In my opinion if there were crz on German servers there would be a lot more whining and blaming and flaming in the forums about it, but I couldn't find a single post... Does anyone know more about it and can answer at least some of my questions?

edit: if this is the wrong place to ask, feel free to move. I didn't want to open a new thread about it.

[Kalliope]

Yes, they're live. You can tell if someone is from a different realm the same way that you can in a battleground - it'll say their server name after their name. So you'd see me as Kalliope of the Alliance - Dethecus. ^_^ I tend to notice that I've swapped zones if the time zone changes or if I see someone from another server present.

[Finduilas]

This might be why I didn't notice it. I only have nameplates turned on on enemies, not my own faction. Maybe I should try turning them on and see if I notice any differences.

[Kalliope]

I don't have same faction nameplates on either; I just notice from mousing over.

[Shade]

That really kind of scared me.

Another way to know if you are entering a CRZ is, if you are on a flight path, you will get a little hangup while crossing borders. Happens all the time to me and is the most annoying thing about the CRZ right now in my count.

[Kurasu]

Cross-realm Zones haven't been a friend of mine, for sure. Not since they first were introduced. Today, though, they have given me the ultimate middle finger.

Time-lost Proto-drake was spawned, alive, in a zone as I passed by it. Not spawned when I landed and went to look.

[Lisaara]

Cross-realm Zones haven't been a friend of mine, for sure. Not since they first were introduced. Today, though, they have given me the ultimate middle finger.

Time-lost Proto-drake was spawned, alive, in a zone as I passed by it. Not spawned when I landed and went to look.

><; Ouch! I'd cry. *offers a hug*

[TygerDarkstorm]

I am not a fan of the cross realm zoning. Not only does it make it really hard to take a friend on a two person flying mount into other zones (I was trying to fly my lowbie on my boyfriend's rocket mount and just getting out of Stormwind was a constant series of dismounts and phasing issues), but it also causes an annoying little hang up in the game, and on top of that, it's allowing people to act as big of jerks now in questing zones as they do in LFD. >:(

Staghelm (US) used to be a really nice server to be on and I personally don't mind questing alone, especially in Outlands as the drop rates there are absurdly low. And then CRZ got introduced and we started crossing over with Whisperwind. I know I'm not the only person to have issues with people from that server so far, and what's worse is that my own faction is griefing me. I was flying around Un'Goro for over an hour looking for a white devilsaur and when I finally found one, landed and started taming, some jerk of a level 80 dwarf shaman flew over and killed my dino despite me typing "stop" in /say. He proceeded to hearth as soon as he did it without a word leading me to believe he had purposely done the deed just to grief me (he has since been reported). It may not be a rare spawn, but finding your color devilsaur in Un'Goro is sometimes as hard as camping a rare, and I feel for all the rare campers out there facing this problem.

I understand why Blizzard did CRZ, we are playing an MMO afterall, and at first I was okay with it. But my experiences with it keep getting worse.

[Lupis]

I've had sort of neutral experiences with it so far- schizophrenic is right, that's for sure . At the moment, I'm enjoying it more than anything. It's really very refreshing to see other people in zones- for the first time, I leveled in Borean Tundra and actually saw other people there. It sort of added a touch of life for me, because suddenly I was sharing the game with other people again, real people that actually played instead of just existing in chat boxes.

Of course, that also means that they're, well, people. People are jerks. As Tyger said, there are people that just go out of their way to annoy you. I was questing and had someone run up, attack a quest mob that I was actively starting to cast a spell at, and run away after I finished their kill. >.> It only took a minute for the mob to respawn, but it impressed me just how bitter people are.

On the other hand… I've also been having a lot of fun with it. Instead of questing on my own, I ended up finding that I was on the same part of a quest as someone on another realm, and we ended up grouping to complete the chain and do some dungeons together. It was really nice to play with a stranger. I always love playing with friends, but the strangers really make the game gain depth for me.

[Teigan]

I hate it. It makes the whole game feel like a PUG. I never know when or where I'm going to be. I feel like I'm in an episode of Quantum Leap. It causes lag. It causes competition and crowding I don't want on a low-medium population server. It makes travel via two person flying a royal PITA. I have not met interesting new people. I have however been told to "get off someone's server." And now its even disabled the fishing dailies.

I think it has caused even more problems than it was intended to fix, without necessarily fixing those problems. I know I'm not alone in disliking it, so it certainly hasn't raised player satisfaction. I sincerely hope they scrap the idea altogether and give us back a sane world.

[Finduilas]

I only noticed CRZ affecting me two or three days ago when logging in a toon that lived in Thunderbluff. I let some of my toons live in Thunderbluff to be away from all the guildspam, lowbies begging for gold and population in general. On my server Norgannon EU I hardly ever saw someone in Thunderbluff, except for an occasional low level tauren getting his quest to Org. I loved Thunderbluff as my city. I had the training dummies, the profession trainers, cooking and fishing dailies, auction house and everything else to myself. Then I log in to find Thunderbluff crowded. Hundreds of lowlevels, several 85 and people from at least 3 different servers occupying my Thunderbluff. I never thought CRZ would affect captial cities, only questing areas. And then it started, people from other servers whispering me to give them gold or leather or whatever. I always responded that it's the same like in a random dungeon: you can't trade other things then mage food or healthstones. But it was so annoying I flew away to hide in Bloodhoof village. But even there some annoying people kept spamming stupid messages at me. Gah, just leave me alone. I love my low pop server, why does Blizz have to put me into zones and even capitals with the worst of what german servers have to offer?
I also hate the lags it now causes when I leave a zone and get into a new one, I always think that my game now crashed. In front of Orgrimmar even my low pop server had alwyas duells going and even some alliance players randomly showed up for pvp, now it's crowded as hell, everywhere spells, area effects and stuff. You can't duell without crossing the path of an other duell and mistaking effects. Is there a limit for people in a zone? If yes, it needs to be lower.
I had asked only a week before how I can notice CRZ, but now that it hit me, I can notice it everywhere. And it's not an experience I'm happy about. I want back my low pop server and I don't want to share it. There's a reason I'm on this server and not any other one.

[Nachtwulf]

I don't like the cross-zone lag.
I don't like that it despawns any minipets I might have with me.
I don't like the increase in jerks.
I don't like the unclickable mob/NPC/profession node bug.
I don't like the 'there it is, there it isn't' phasing of rares.
I don't like how disorienting it is to be flying along and it's daytime then poof it's night time. Then you fly out of the zone again and it's light again.

Frankly... I don't like CRZ. At all.

But it's someone at Blizzard's precious baby and no matter how many pages of complaint we file (the ones on the official forums went over two thread extensions and then a whole additional thread so far), they aren't going to get rid of it. All they're going to do is mealy-mouth about how it's just 'some minor bugs' and 'really it's good for everyone' when we all know it's badly designed, badly implemented, and frankly, just plain bad.

[kritzrogue]

You're missing 2 important ones.

Sharing all those beautiful rare skin/spawn mobs with all those other factions.
(Including mount drops of rares)

And bloody annoying lvl 90 gankers in low lvl area's (AKA Hellfire Penisula).

- And for both is the same simple solution possible. When you take a flypath to any area you fly along your own server, thus you can see all kinds of rares that aint "up" on the CRZ-server.
This means that you are "seeing" 2 different servers/realms at the same time as it is.

Put people lvling in 1 and high lvl people going after achievements in the other.
So say: Anything Azeroth (minus cataclysm zones (80+) ofcourse),
Any lvl 1-60 zone make them CRZ for people 1-60. As soon as you're 61 you get those CRZ with 61-90.
Outland ? 58 - 70. You "ding" 71, you get it CRZ shared with 71 - 90.
Northrend? 68 - 80. You "ding" 81, you get it CRZ shared with 81 - 90.
Hyjal, Vash'jr, Uldum, Deep holm, Twilight Highlands make them 80 - 85 CRZ, you ding 86? You get to share those locations with lvl 90s.

World pvp is fine, pvp servers still get to pvp, but only against people of near same lvl. In Classic killing low lvls was discouraged by DisHonorable Kills, so its not a "new" idea.
Currently playing on a pvp server and lvling up thru any area that gets Archeaology finds himself face down in the dirt because a random lvl 90 flew over his head and 1shotted him.
And then there is the permanent gankers in Hellfire Peninsula and Borean Tundra.
say you're lvl 71, a lvl 74 or 75 can kill you, probably without you being able to do much back.. but atleast its a fight. Pew 1-shot !
Without you even seeing the other before you are dead, thats not pvp, thats slaughter.

(and yes i've suggested this on wow forums allready, aswell as ingame suggestion option)

IF YOU HAVE MOVED ON TO THE NEXT CONTENT, GET OUT OF THE CRZ of people lvling there. (like Battleground brackets)