r/classicwow • u/zhellqq • 16d ago
Forever Beta Feedback Phasing like this is really immersion breaking
I understand why they do it, but it feels like there has to be a more elegant way of handling it, or perhaps a better "overlap" period where someone only moves off your layer when they are no longer visible.
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u/FakeSafeWord 16d ago
A great fix would be CRZ Affinity aka “Home Layers”
Right now there's 40-51 geographic zones, depending on how major cities are cut up, and however many hundreds of shards(instances) available for each zone, but the zones themselves are seemingly not linked in any way to provide continuity to players which is what is causing all of these problems. Have the system dynamically provide the number of layers needed to support the population and each one has it's own set of tied shards for each of the 40-51 geographic zones.
Each Home Layer would contain a full geographic set of zone shards: one CRZ for Elwynn, one for Westfall, one for Redridge, etc. When you create a character, you're assigned a Home Layer, and the system tries to keep you on that layer across zone transitions whenever possible.
Players could manually select a different preferred Home Layer, potentially with something like a one-hour cooldown to prevent abusing it. Joining a party, PUG, or raid would still temporarily move you to another layer but you don't immediately transition off of that layer if kicked or the party disbands. You would only return to your own layer on reload, hearth out or transitioning to another zone so that you have control of when you transition back to your home layer.
The system would only ever move you elsewhere if your layer's CRZ for that zone is at capacity, restarting, or otherwise having performance problems. If a CRZ develops a problem, it could remove itself from the load-balancing pool while existing players are gradually offloaded to another temporarily selected CRZ that's inserted itself in place of the unavailable CRZ of the home layer. All players should be shuffled to this CRZ if possible for continuity.
If you're temporarily moved away from your Home Layer, the next zone transition or reload attempts to return you to it once the appropriate CRZ is healthy and back in the load-balancing pool.
Low-population layers could also be consolidated. If Home Layer #3443 becomes chronically underpopulated, players could get a notice that it will close in 48 hours and everyone remaining will be moved together to Home Layer #8373. The UI could include an option to migrate immediately. Blizzard could then shut down the unused infrastructure instead of maintaining mostly empty shards.
When you cross a zone boundary, or leave a party, you should generally see the same people. Players disappearing or appearing would mostly be limited to people who had temporarily been placed outside their Home Layer and were returning to it.
It wouldn't eliminate CRZ transitions entirely, but they would become the exception instead of something you seemingly witness every time you cross a zone boundary.
You'd get much more of the community continuity of traditional realms while retaining most of the scalability, performance, and infrastructure-cost advantages of the current CRZ system.