A small appeal re: phasing

Over the last couple of years, we've begun using some new technology we've occasionally referred to as "sharding" in non-instanced zones, which separates players in high-traffic areas out into separate "shards" of a particular zone. The benefit to our server performance has been massive - it was a huge part of why Legion's launch went so smoothly - and so, as a whole, we've been very happy with the system.

The one exception has been on RP realms, where player-run events are much more common. On RP realms, we believe that the overall loss to game performance is worth it in order to support those events. If players on RP realms choose to organize an event and congregate somewhere, and have a laggy experience as a result, that's their choice, and we'd like to allow them as much freedom to do so as possible.

So, we've recently applied a hotfix that should disable realm sharding in the vast majority of the outdoor world on RP realms. That includes Kalimdor, the Eastern Kingdoms, Northrend, Pandaria, Outland, Draenor, and all related sub-zones. This has actually been our intention for some time now, but as part of investigating some reports involving a player-run event in Northrend, we discovered some secondary issues that were causing it not to function properly.

There are still limits, of course; we don't want playing on an RP realm to mean you can't properly experience core game content due to low FPS or heavy input lag. As such, all Legion zones (including all of the Broken Isles, the Broken Isles version of Dalaran, and soon, Argus) will still have sharding active, as they do on non-RP realms. Similarly, when the game itself points players toward a specific area of the non-Legion world (such as for a holiday event or new patch content), we may temporarily re-enable sharding in that area until things settle down.

In general, however, our goal is to follow the general rule of thumb that RP realms do not shard, except in current-expansion zones, or when temporarily necessary to support gameplay. This should now be the case on all RP and RP-PvP realms worldwide. This is in addition to our existing rule that RP realms do not automatically fill areas using our Cross-Realm Zones system (although you can still enter an RP realm using CRZ if you're grouped with a player on an RP realm).

Thanks for all your patience while we implemented the hotfix on this, and awesome job on the Tournament of Ages, guys! :)

08/08/2017 04:41 PMPosted by Karosong

What about cities ?

No, capital cities should not shard, with the exception of Dalaran above the Broken Isles as mentioned in my post.

If you are seeing issues with this for some reason, please let us know!

<span class="truncated">...</span>No, capital cities should not shard, with the exception of Dalaran above the Broken Isles as mentioned in my post.

If you are seeing issues with this for some reason, please let us know!

Ornyx. On Wyrmrest Accord in Stormwind, Sharding does still seem to be an issue.

I've tested it MANY times, and a lot of times I can't see my own alt sitting in the same spot as my main (When my second account was active).

And while it may not have as much RP or many events, Dalaran (Broken Isles) still does have RP, and a lot of times I'm disconnected from my guild and end up having to be invited to a group because of it.

Can we please just eliminate sharding all together for RP realms? It's quite annoying to know that on one shard there's open RP, but you can't join in unless you ask to be invited to a group =/

The hotfix mentioned was applied yesterday evening and currently appears to be functioning properly. I would ask that you check this again, as I'm not seeing any issues on the couple of servers I personally checked.

We have no plans to eliminate sharing systems for Legion content at this time, as mentioned in my earlier post. Legion is considered core and current gameplay, and the last thing we want to see is latency or FPS issues affecting players who are trying to complete current content. As current content moves away from current zones, whether that be in a patch or expansion, we will review feedback on those zones on a case-by-case basis as the need arises.

08/08/2017 04:59 PMPosted by Jalën

Lemme also ask if you're still reading Ornyx. With the removal of phasing in the old world, is it possible to bring back World Defense just for those zones?

I don't have anything to add on this, unfortunately. From my understanding the system that supported World Defense was deprecated and I'm sure what the timeline may be to see its return. I'm aware of Holinka's recent words on this, but I am not aware of any current status of the project. Let's keep this thread on-topic though. :)

08/08/2017 05:21 PMPosted by Jalën

I don't have anything to add on this, unfortunately. From my understanding the system that supported World Defense was deprecated and we are very unlikely to see its return at this point. Let's keep this thread on-topic though. :)

I don't really believe that this is completely off topic. Like stated before on RP realms with PvP, one of the biggest reasons as to why the World Defense Channel was removed was because of the phasing technology that was implemented. But now seeing that it was removed in the old world, I wanted to ask if there was a possibility of it making a return.

As to the point of it very unlikely returning, I thought it was said during Holinkas Q&A that while there's no delivery date, there will be an effort to making it return in the future for roleplayers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzIRVeXcd6A&feature=youtu.be&t=3181

I'm aware that he doesn't work for WoW PvP any longer, this statement came from the PvP Lead of World of Warcraft. So it leaves me in confusion.

Apologies, I think my wording may have caused some confusion - i meant 'at this point' as in, in the current scope of things I'm not sure we are likely to see its imminent return. I updated the wording on my post to be more clear. Again, I don't have updates on where that project is or as to the status of it at all.

While I understand your point that World Defense was removed because of phasing, it's really a side discussion that should be held on its own, separate from this. Again, let's keep discussion here directed at the changes we made to phasing yesterday to support the on-going efforts of the RP community.