I can see other players from quite a long distance vertically, when flying for example. But horizontally, they ‘phase’ out from quite a short distance.
They have not actually ‘phased’ in this situation have they? Blizz just doesn’t want to draw them at X distance, am I right? If I chase after the other player, they ‘phase’ back in.
I’m wondering, how big a % of phasing, is just this view distance effect? For example, a large group of enemy players suddenly appears. Did they actually phase in? Or did you just walk towards their location and Blizz drew them?
In my opinion, a lot of perception of phasing issues, could potentially be explained by this effect. When a player right beside me disappears, it’s usually easy to tell the reason: lfg, alt f4, etc. If it’s at a distance, less easy to tell the reason.
For me horizontal view distance is not a problem - it’s still a lot of time to react, doesn’t matter if one or raid inc. Plus it’s quite distinctive looking “pop” on screen to confuse it with players sharding in and away around you.
Doesn’t seem to just be a box. I’ve noticed, sometimes other player’s suddenly appear very close when we are moving towards each other. Usually both mounted and moving at speed - but they were for sure already in the shard, because they had recently moved away from me. More noticeable when they are a group.
Would this be considered phasing? Or just character display lag? Or maybe character display distance depends on number of nearby players? I’ve seen it happen in epic bgs too. It’s for sure different from the, by design, players not being displayed outside 200 yards box or whatever it is. This issue is within 40 yards, maybe even 20.
Doesn’t seem to be a quest phase area, because they don’t re-phase out, and also that should not affect entire groups. Sounds like a character display lag issue, or number of players affect their display distance.
Maybe, a large group slightly spread out, nearby members become visible at same time, based on the distance limit being the center of the nearby group members? Making the members closest to you more noticably pop in.
It could be. But phasing is really easy to spot - it always happens in a set locations, like WQ at Nazmir Assault, or water not far from turtles in Stormsong, or water near CoA/Turtles in Drustvar, or Naga invasions, etc.
Phasing zones don’t move - always same places where phases can change.
From your description - it really looks like a lag, especially when you added Epics BGs.
When I played on my PC - I had that kind of lag rarely, and when it happened it’s usually
ether long game session without restarting game - WoW client can start to struggle drawing new appearing models
or in places of intence sharding activity, with lots of players changing shards (assaults, auto-lfg WQs, capitals)
or both
But when I played from my laptop - all of the above was much more evident, hehe
When it happens - you can see by player’ actions that they were “here” and were doing something, and not just sharded in - it’s like game client decided to finally draw their model on screen.
I think it’s something in game client and how much data is has to go through before showing a model on screen, plus amount of that data probably got bigger with all additional data from sharding - because I was playing on this laptop when came back before BfA pre-patch and there was other lag, but not like that - with models drawing too late.
Plus - when I turn nameplates off for all - that lag is much less and it draws models faster (on a laptop, wasn’t able to catch it on PC).
Similar lags of drawing players models could happen when big raids 20+ sharding in all at once, or on first clash in Epic BGs.
Eeeeenteresting. Hmm, my pc has powah, but my ms is not good at 120ish due to huge physical distance from game server. And game not currently on SSD. Maybe something to do with it. Or maybe just happens, certain locations, certain situations.
Thinking about this stuff, makes me realize the complexity going on inside the game. How does it all work as good as it does lol. Blizz smerties.