#1 - Sept. 1, 2014, 10:08 p.m.
Edit: Holy crap I seem to have struck a nerve within the community. This thread has taken off like I wouldn't have imagined. I've seen a lot of people weighing in on this topic who seem to be confused, however, so I'd like to clarify what CRZ is.
You grouping with players from other servers via your friends list: Not CRZ. This is Battle Tag and Real ID.
You grouping with random people from other servers for dungeon/raid finder and battlegrounds: Not CRZ. This is Dungeon/Raid/Battleground Finder.
You having guildies and seeing players in trade chat from another server: Not CRZ. This is coalesced realms.
You seeing random players from non-coalesced realms with whom you can not join guilds or trade items/gold: CRZ.
You having a player riding on your back as the Sandstone drake fall from your back between zones and die: CRZ.
You being engaged in world PvP combat only to have said combat be broken by the other player visably vanishing from your screen seemingly at random: CRZ.
You seeing a rare spawn, ore/herb node, or anything you're interested in interacting with vanishing when you get close: Not CRZ. This is regular phasing.
CRZ was meant to populate low level zones that tend to be more vacant than current content end game zones. This was achieved to a slight degree, but as I and many others believe it's an outdated system made irrelevant by coalesced realms. I still level without seeing anyone else in more obscure zones, like Badlands and Thousand Needles. On the same note I can't help but notice more bottom of the barrel max level wannabe PvP superstars hanging out in leveling bottleneck zones like Hellfire ganking lowbies than ever before. CRZ didn't work. It never worked as it was intended, and yet Blizz is intent on keeping this broken system intact without ever acknowledging the in game social and technical problems that plague the whole thing. I used to enjoy zones like Hellfire and Hyjal, but since CRZ they've been the zones I dread the most, even on PvE servers. Granted I can't be ganked, but entire quest hubs can be wiped out by one person, leaving myself and every other player at that hub waiting for the quest givers to respawn. Blizz's best answer to these issues is to just wait and hope the jerk who killed all of the questgivers is done being a jerk. I miss the pre CRZ leveling experience, and I know I'm very far from the only one. I still remember day one of CRZ in Blasted Lands by the Dark Portal. I'm sure everyone from PvP servers remembers it too. Low level zones shouldn't be high level characters' WPvP battlegrounds, but since so many people out there would rather gank lowbies than do anything that requires any degree of skill and Blizz is content with CRZ we will forever be plagued by bottom feeders halting the once amazing leveling experience that helped to make World of Warcraft the massive success it used to be.