Kontroversial Keith

World of Warcraft: Cross Realm Zones, the Clusterfuck

Patch 5.0.4 went into a effect two weeks ago and already patch 5.0.5 is scheduled for tomorrow. Part of it ought to address the clusterfuck called Cross Realm Zones (or CRZ). As always, Blizzard completely underestimated their gaming community when implementing CRZ and it’s become a gigantic mess. I won’t go into details about why CRZ is a big mess, but I do want to go into what I feel their ideal was vs what it should’ve been.

Here’s Blizzard’s interpretation of what CRZ should’ve been:

“Hey, even after revamping all of Vanilla areas, people still won’t quest in Desolace!”

One person at Desolace, “Wait, I’m here!”

“Ah! That means, we need to put more people in there so that it’ll be fun and social for the guy leveling!”

Um, Desolace is empty because it’s a shit place to level. The vast majority of the zone is just boring and people won’t go there because there are better spots to level. People didn’t go there in Cataclysm because most people probably already had an 80th level toon and wanted to hit 85 to go raiding. Any veteran players figured that questing is a complete waste of time for the most part and just instance grind their way to 80. The few people who do level in Desolace do it maybe once and promptly forget the whole place as it’s dreary and boring overall. Putting a little bit of foliage did nothing to make the area more appealing.

Instead, the places where you really see people are popular spots so that they can grab ore and other resources. This doesn’t sound like the way the CRZ was originally intended. It sounds like Blizzard’s disease called…..

LAZY PROGRAMMING

But let’s put that aspect aside and attempt to define what CRZ should’ve been all along….

Player in LFG.

“Hey, this guy in the dungeon is pretty cool. But damn, he’s in another realm and I probably won’t ever see him again. Let’s exchange email/battle net tags so we can keep in contact!”

New Friend in Other Realm.

“Man, my realm sucks because I’m in an Oceanic realm where everyone is awake at 4am my time and I can’t really play with this guy I just met. But hey Mist of Panderia is around the corner and more than likely, I’ll be soloing content again for the entire expansion.”

Zing…..

The way CRZ should’ve been is those who want to group up across realms should be able to the way LFG (and some raids) are being done now. Exchange email or Battle.net tags. Then hit a special button that allows a player to bring others in their realm (and vice versa).

Oh wait! But now we’re hurting Blizzard’s revenue because this will lower the incentive for overpriced realm transfers!

No, because most of the time players will more than likely solo the content they’ve been wanting to do. Many players want small populations to either avoid gankings on PVP realms or to avoid social griefing and have more resources available to them. So grouping up still means that the resources will be more limited overall. However, for a few hours now and then, players who group up would be able to at least enjoy hanging out and leveling together.

At any rate, Blizzard fucked up big time in this. They had a huge opportunity to improve the world but completely screwed it up, along with LFR loot rules in patch 5.0.4. It’s doubtful even with fixing bugs that CRZ is going to improve the perception of Blizzard as well as the social aspects. But Blizzard is overhill and their shit does stink without them being able to tell anymore. Good thing I got a busy CTO position because damn I’d hate to waste more time on a shitty ass feature.

(Visited 139 times, 1 visits today)

Comments

comments

Posted

in

,

by

keithyw

Tags:

, , , , ,

Comments

2 responses to “World of Warcraft: Cross Realm Zones, the Clusterfuck”

  1. Tyrantis Avatar
    Tyrantis

    I think you hit the nail on the head with a great feature idea. I used to play on Arthas from classic all the way to Wrath of Lich King, after getting screwed over by the guild I had raided with so long and Cataclysm coming around the corner I thought it time for a fresh start and began playing on a low population PVE server. Mainly because I was older and had a job with more responsibilities and just couldn’t afford getting ganked over and over again and fighting for everything along the way.

    This worked well had a blast, and then CRZ hit the fan. Suddenly every zone I’m in feels like I’m playing release for WOTLK. Every resource, or mob dependent quest I set out on I find myself waiting on respawns, watching players from other server 10’s of levels higher than me camp spawns just to tick me off, and taking in general twice as long to do whatever I did before. To say nothing of the bugs and other problems.

    Now I would love to be able to just hope on Arthas and play for a period with some old friends I have on there or visa versa when not a lots going on and looking to kill sometime, but the current system just kills my time when I dont want it wasted.

    If Realm Transfers took a drop from your recommendation, maybe it needs to for being a poor business practice. Having paid $15 a month for literally years, if anything Blizzard should give me a free transfer but they don’t and because I feel I’ve given Blizzard enough of my time and money. To be honest there is no reason Blizzard couldn’t code automatic solutions to allow players to transfer anytime within reason that’s all handled via database and server.

    In all fairness though Blizzard is trying new innovative things, but they honestly need to get their feedback straight in testing before implementing disastrous ideas like this.

  2. keithyw Avatar
    keithyw

    actually, i think they mostly need to sort out the rules in CRZ now that i’ve dealt with it for a while. for instance, my friend plays on Stormreaver. if i invite him, there’s some stupid rules that decide which realm to place one of us on. i think it depends on level, how many people in the group, etc. the rules should be far more straight forward than that. if a person invites someone else, that other person should go to that realm under all circumstances. the thing is that if you invite more than one, then you get transplanted into the other realm.

    i know what blizzard is thinking here. they’re thinking, “Hey, that means someone is going to create an alt on a PVE server with a low population, farm the crap out of stuff then invite all their guildie friends!”

    let me ask this. what’s wrong with that scenario? if the server has a low population, why not take advantage of it? is it the invitee’s fault for the server being low population in the first place? also, you can take advantage of this regardless. top guilds could easily have alts on other realms, create large groups then farm the crap out of them while inviting their buds from their guild over. it doesn’t take a rocket scientists to figure out how to wrangle this broken system.

    i think CRZ creates more problems than it solves. the one thing i do think is a major positive is when my friend does lower level raids. since my guild sucks with everyone quitting and the GM never being on to really manage things, there’s really not much to do on my realm. i have no desire to transfer characters. but at least on occasion my friend will invite me along.

    also, i don’t buy the whole, “Cool there’s other people around!” yes, it’s interesting to see more than 2 people in Desolace or Silithus on occasion. but truthfully, who cares? if there’s no permanent connection between players through doing things like interrealm guilds, then why even bother having CRZ?

Leave a Reply