CRZ Feedback

#1 - Sept. 7, 2012, 2:58 p.m.
Blizzard Post
With so many threads complaining about the issues of CRZ, it becomes difficult for the developers to see a consolidated list of why people are having issues with this new feature.

In an effort to save Blizzard time and help spread the voice of the community, I have consolidated the list of the issues people have in a constructive manner so that the issues can be addressed and dealt with accordingly.

This is not a flame thread. This is not an arguement for or against CRZ. This is just a constructive feedback post so pleace try to keep things civil. If you agree with the issues stated, please say "Agreed" or "Disagree" to avoid fights. If you feel there is something missing from th list, please put it below.

Again, this is NOT a debate or flame war.

----------------------

Issues with CRZ:

1. Ruining of Immersion
a. Rubber band effects at zone borders
b. Time Changes between zones
c. Inability to recruit players from other servers to guilds and trade
d. Language Barriers (Brazilian Servers and American Servers mixing)
e. RP Conflictions
f. Quest Waiting **
g. Camping of Quest Givers (can fall under griefing)
h. Illusion of Populated Zones
i. Time zone differences causing issues with timed events like fishing tournaments (Thank you Adelaide)

2. "Community" not really a community
a. Griefing
b. Inability to Report (Ignore and Report features not working for other server players due to "This Player does not exist" messages"
c. Harassment (There are reasons why people paid for server transfers)
d. General / Trade Chat spam (Normal for any server but an issue when you have the normal of 2-3 servers combining into one)
e. Low Population servers enjoying Low population community and vice versa for High Population servers.
f. Lost sense of community and pride in home server (Thank you Ayrie)
g. Bigotry in once safe havens (Thank you Serunna)
h. Server vs. Server more than Alliance vs. Horde (Thank you Sauceror)
i. Stalking (poster wishes to remain anonymus)

3. Economic
a. Low Population AH Issues
b. Node Sharing without node spawn increase **
c. Rare spawn sharing without Spawn increase **
d. Crowding (All the issues of high population servers with few if any of the benefits)

4. Bugs and Issues
a. See Above under "Ruining of Immersion"
b. Disconnects
c. Tradeskill resets
d. Mob "Evade" issue
e. /who only showing people in the zone from your server (Thank you Banard)
f. Major Lag issues (Thank you Searc)
g. Phasing Issues (Thank you Adelaide)
h. Skill spam entering Zones [old school weapon skill and language skill] (Thank you Banard)
i. Increase ticket numbers to blizzard for reporting farming bots. (Thank you again Banard!)
j. Tol Barad and Wintergrasp Control Issues (Alliance and Horde controling at the same time) (Thank you again Adelaide!)
k. Auto-dismounting upon changing zones and falling to your death (Thank you Tippi)
l. PvE and PvP zones/realms being mixed. (Thank you Shadowshadë)
m. FPS issues (Thank you Kiraleen)
n. Error#134
o. Raid groups are able to keep changing servers and taking avantage of stuff like the darkmoon fair rabbit. (Thank you Shadowshadë)
p. Quests dropping out mid-zone due to issues where you should be phasing for that point in the quests (like in Uldum) (Thank you Aiera)
q. Cross realm restarts and Server Restart overlapping/not in sync (Thank you Vynianyx)
u. Passenger dismounting upon changing zones. (Thank you Lefteous)
v. Disconnecting and logging back it to where your hearthstone is set (Thank you Aiera)
w. Glyph of Charm Animal not translating over into new zones (Thank you Kurston)
x. NPC Fade issue (Thank you Lianxin)
y. Raid groups server hopping to farm bosses and raids.
z. Inability to Report (Ignore and Report features not working for other server players due to "This Player does not exist" messages"
Aa. Unclickable Npcs (Thank you Pegwynnie)
Ab. World Defense Spam (Thank you Joynal)
Ac. Ports/Hearthstones/Tabards fail if the realm the destination zone is hosted on is down (Thank you Gothitelle)
Ad. Guild People "Vanishing" in CRZ areas (Thank you Eluniar)
Ae. Unable to return to corpse after dying due to the zone becoming a CRZ (Thank you Cybrind)
Af. "Instance Not Found" messages - (Thank you Guilltaur)

5. MISC.
a. The feature is not as how it was explained previously and lack of communication with the implementation of it. (Thank you Buffybot)
b. Not effective/Working as intended (Thank you Nicolay)
c. BETA "feel" (Thank you Ofcorpseican)
d. Holiday competition issues (Thank you Scytheblade)**
e. Rare mob camping and timing issues (Thank you Turtoth)**
f. Questing is Solo-oriented (Thank you Murmurs)

----------------

---- HELPFUL SUGGESTIONS ----
1. Combine similar population servers. Leave High/Full Population servers out of it. (Thank you Vynianyx)
2. Do not Include the zones of Tol Barad and Wintergrasp (Thank you Vynianyx and Velisae)
3. Only combine realms of similar time zones (Thank you Vynianyx and Velisae)
4. Do not combine MoP Zones until well after the release (Thank you Velisae)
5. Dynamically increase Node spawns (Thank you Velisae)
6. Rare pets/spawns "Realm phased" (Thank you Velisae)
7. Make CRZ Optional (Thank you Autumn)
8. Make CRZ stricter with realm types (Thank you Sweetpeaz)
9. Don't allow cross-realm groups for characters on separate accounts under the same battle.net account (Thank you Nobs)
10. Restrict the level that can initiate a cross realm. (Thank you Nobs)
11. Players must be reasonably close to each other for the phasing to occur (Thank you Nobs)
12. Cap the number of players that can be phased in a group (Thank you Nobs)
13. Make Daily Quest Hubs Phased by Server (Thank you many people!)
14. Free Transfers/Close Servers/Split the Zones instead of Combine them (Thank you Calyto)
15. Faction Balance in Zones (Thank you Kiebler!)
16. Allow for free transfer upon joining a guild on another server (Thank you Kurston)
17. Keep the merged servers within the same battle groups
18. Cut down the zones that are CRZs (Thank you Protshotz)
19. Bring back Group Quests/Bosses (Thank you Murmurs)
20. Make the cross-realm zone instances separate from those on persistent servers and give us a flag to enter such zones or not. (Thank you Elagabalus)
21. Add a pop-up that explains the nature of a phased realm. This will help players be aware of PvP realms having constant-flags, and roleplay realms being in-character environments. (Thank you Yaegar)
22. Add a timer for CRZ quests to discourage bots from farming under the quest pretense (Thank you Ranthoria)
23. Cross Realm AH
24. Make some parts of the game able to be CRZs as opposed to the majority (Like Firelands was) (Thank you Nixilaas)
25. Make CRZ Invite only via RealID/Battletags (Thank you Yabba)
26. Less XP penalty for grouping (Thank you Akvon)
27. Allow for accepting quests in zones higher than is currently allowed (Thank you Akvon)
28. CRZ Level Restrictions to zones (Thank you Nidawi)
29. When RealId party is created and all party members are phased, make rare, rare-elite, boss mobs invisible to the players from another realm (Thank you Aligatro)

----------------

~~~ POSITIVES OF CRZ ~~~
1. More wPvP (Thank you Ratinger)
2. Seeing other people (Thank you Ratinger)
3. WAR has been brought back to the World of WARcraft (Thank you Elindel)
4. The idea of being able to find a group for stuff like CoC/RoB/etc (Thank you Nobs)
5. The splitting of zones into phased zones to deal with overpopulation (Thank you Murmurs)
6. Playing with friends from other servers (Thank you Autumn)
7. Increase in Rare Node Spawns (Thank you Buffybot)
8. Allowing for any raid or party members to join the raid leader's server (Thank you Rôdeurdesboi)
9. Lets you investigate the community of a server you are thinking of transferring to. (Thank you Aet)
10. Pug old raids or even DS cross realm without the need to use Open-Raid (Thank you Aet)
11. RPing with others realms if you are on a Dead-RP server (Thank you Yaegar)
12.The ability get away from being camped(join a friend from another server) (Thank you War)
13.Getting away from Harassment through RID realm swap (Thank you War)
14. Fresh people to RP with, more stories to hear, RP ideas (Thank you War)

** - Denotes minor issues that just come with having more people around and is not just caused by CRZ. However it is still an inconvienence

IF YOU FIND THIS AT ALL USEFUL AND CONSTRUCTIVE, PLEASE HIT THE "REQUEST STICKY" BUTTON AT THE TOP!


Dr. David's Final Thoughts: ((See pg. 41 Before you flame me))
Cross-Realm Zones (CRZ) has its supporters and naysayers, both with valid arguments about the feature. However, due to improper BETA testing of this new feature, it has added so many technical issues and unforeseen side-effects that the game has become unplayable for many people. While CZR is well-meaning and a relatively good idea, the current state of things have left many people unhappy to the point that people whom have never complained before are now considering not only canceling MoP pre-orders, but leaving the game entirely.

Therefore, it is my sincerest recommendation that this feature be REMOVED until after the release of Mists of Pandaria and accurate information can be gathered on the population of realms with the new expansion.

In the meantime, it is my sincerest hope that Blizzard’s technical team work on the issues complied here so that this feature, if needed, can be rereleased at a later date in a manner that appeals to everyone.


-----------

Just spoke with GC via Twitter (actually I wa apologizing to him for someone harrassing his twitter with this.

Convo went as follows:


@Forumdin

@Ghostcrawler Hey GC, I just wanted to apologize for someone harassing you with a link to my forum post. It was not my intent (the crz guy)


@Ghostcrawler

.@Forumdin No worries. We understand CRZ concerns, but some of them are misconceptions or bugs. Twitter bad for addressing them. We will.



Long story short, we will be hearing something on the WoW website soon one way or another. Like I stated in my main post, a lot of what the issues are (aside from bugs) was a lack of communications between Blizzard and the player-base in implimenting this system

Greg Street‏@Ghostcrawler

Many questions on CRZ. I don't have the bandwidth here to explore that topic, but we'll work on a forum post. Some misinformation and bugs.
Forum Avatar
Community Manager
#409 - Sept. 8, 2012, 12:20 a.m.
Blizzard Post
I know there have been a large number of discussions regarding cross-realm zones, especially given that this is a brand new feature in World of Warcraft as of patch 5.0.4.

Your feedback is being compiled and reported back to the developers. We’re actively monitoring both positive and critical topics expressing issues or concerns players are having with cross-realm zones. We plan to clarify much of the causes for confusion in the near future. Until then, I just want to thank you for taking the time to compile and categorize the common reports for this. :)
Forum Avatar
Community Manager
#9006 - Sept. 20, 2012, 9:19 p.m.
Blizzard Post
The thread cap has been extended. Hang in there, we're working on a response.
Forum Avatar
Community Manager
#10914 - Sept. 22, 2012, 2:15 a.m.
Blizzard Post
Thanks for all of the feedback!

We've created a new thread here to clarify common feedback, concerns, and bug reports we've been seeing. Please look it over and feel free to continue the discussion in the new thread.