Virtual Realms

[Shade]

I didn't see a topic about this yet and just saw it in the patch notes here:

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/10158897

"Virtual Realms are sets of realms that are fused together, and will behave exactly as if they were one cohesive realm. Players on the same Virtual Realm will be able to join guilds, access a single Auction House, join arena teams and raids, as well run dungeons or group up to complete quests.

Players belonging to the same Virtual Realm will have a (#) symbol next to their name."

Is this essentially just them merging low population realms, but allowing people to keep the name of their realm? Any idea which realms are likely to be included on this?

[Kalliope]

See, this is the big fix we've been looking for. <3 Yay!

[Aeladrine]

I am curious about one thing... What happens if two people on these realms have the same name?

[Vephriel]

I am curious about one thing... What happens if two people on these realms have the same name?

I believe both keep their name and it will just have the server suffix like we see currently.

[Quiv]

if they act as one cohesive realm, with trading and mailing, then this effectively raises the character limit per realm for those realms.

[Rawr]

Does this mean if I have characters on both realms that become virtual realms with each other I will essentially have 22 toons on one realm?

[Quiv]

Well with any PTR cycle, we have to take things with a grain of salt, especially implications and assumptions. I hope it means this though.

I also hope the implementation isn't akin to CRZ. I don't mind CRZ in theory but the way it was implemented was yucky.

[Myrrmi]

I'm sorry, but I haven't caught one thing: are VR implemented in addition to CRZ, or are they replacing it? (/praying for the 2nd one)

[Slickrock]

I'm sorry, but I haven't caught one thing: are VR implemented in addition to CRZ, or are they replacing it? (/praying for the 2nd one)

That's a really good question, and I don't think they've given enough details yet to say. They also haven't said how they are picking the realms to merge, and they haven't said if the virtual realm pairing are permament, although I imagine they would be. Finally, they haven't said how it effects larger population servers with extreme faction imbalances...

Much to learn...

[Albain]

Right now AFIAK, CRZ was the mass testing platform for Virtual Realms. To see if it was even possible, where the thresholds would be, etcetera. Thus in theory CRZ will go away when Virtual Realms launch, but there's no telling at this point, nor is there a way to be sure which servers are getting linked and which aren't.

Another possible good point: it's fledgling steps in the direction of cross-server mailing.

[Slickrock]

Neth replied to a tweet of mine regarding this, but they aren't giving any details yet...

[Sar]

if they act as one cohesive realm, with trading and mailing, then this effectively raises the character limit per realm for those realms.

That's actually a very salient point I hadn't considered.

[Sukurachi]

well, if this can resolve the incredibly annoying "zoning" effect from cross-realm zones when flying, it would be awesome.

and obviously, if it also means that we can basically have twice as many toons as before, that's even MORE awesome.

[Quiv]

While the thought of more effective character slots excites me greatly, the fact we know so precious little about how this is going to be implemented makes me hope with caution.

[Sukurachi]

ah, hope is hope, whether it be with caution, or with caramel sauce!

[Quiv]

moar caramel sauce pls!

[Sigrah]

If I had to guess, I would think that CRZ isn't likely to go away with the addition of Virtual Realms. One of the reasons CRZ was implemented was to make older and lower level zones seem "more full" by combining players from each server within a specific battle group. For example, my primary server, Area 52, is part of the Retaliation Battlegroup which includes: Area 52, Azuremyst, Blade's Edge, and about 11 other servers. They basically added CRZ as an extension to LFG / LFR, meaning you run into people from other servers within your Battlegroup with the exception being people that bring Real ID friends to their server temporarily.

Now, how Virtual Realms will fit in with all of this remains to be seen. I suspect there's probably 3 ways they may do it:

1) They apply it universally across all Battlegroups. In this case, CRZ would simply be extended to include combined AH's, allow people from different servers to be in the same guild, and all the other things Blizzard says they want to include with Virtual Realms. Of course, this also would most likely mean that Pandaria would be included in all of this. After all, what's the point of having a Virtual Realm if you can't group with your guild mates from other servers in full?

2) They only apply Virtual Realms to the Low Population servers. In this case, that would mean just the Low Pop servers would be going through the above scenario, leaving Medium and High Pop servers to stand on their own more or less. However, it likely means we'd still be CRZ'd, at least for what we have so far.

3) They apply Virtual Realms to have Low Population servers attached to High Population ones. In this case, it would mean a High Pop server acts as a sort of "seed" that 2, 3 or more Low Pop servers are attached to.

Of course, I could be way off, and maybe they will do something completely different that no one here see's coming. Regardless, I just don't see CRZ going away with this. If anything, I see it being "expanded", at least to the Low Pop servers. If they *do* decided to implement it for every server, though, I seriously hope they realign battle groups so that there's not only an even distribution of low, medium, and high pop servers within it, but also makes sure there's a relatively balance between Horde and Alliance players.

[Azunara]

Do you think this also can mean cross-server heirlooms if you're within the same VR?

[Aeladrine]

Do you think this also can mean cross-server heirlooms if you're within the same VR?

I'm pretty sure something was mentioned about cross-server mailing somewhere? I mean, I can't find it again, so take this with a huge heaping of salt, but I could've sworn I saw something saying we would be able to mail BOA items across servers...