I think ultimately sharding will hurt the classic WoW experience.
If players are phasing in and out with each other, it gives you the sense that the game world is broken up and simulated. A world has weight when it’s persistent and true, but if its rules bend from time to time, it’s no longer convincing.
Rules in a game are important- they create the place where you can experience something. The rules are the boundaries set forth to define the game. But the wrong rules, bending them, or the lack of them all work against it.
A game without rules is a sandbox, and boring because the desire to do anything is lost. But designing rules around the experience and creating points of contrast make a game world believable and fun.
Contrast is how everything in our world exists… how else could someone like myself want to climb the ladder only after seeing a really good player- but if the playing field is leveled what’s to aspire to?
Being challenged to do something is fun and creates the kind of experiences people love. Having to earn something by proving your worth- a high risk, but high reward challenge- is fulfilling to achieve. If it gets too easy, the reward loses value.
What amazes me about a World like Warcraft’s is that everything isn’t a cookie cutter theme park ride, but you define your own experience. Sounds obvious but I think these days it’s taken for granted when you’re guided through everything. I’m able to define that experience much less because the opportunity to do so isn’t cultivated as much.
That’s why creating design which drives and reinforces the organic experiences that come up is what will put the world back in warcraft.
Sharding only puts a band-aid on a much larger problem. The real solution will come only after thinking about the world at large and bringing life to it.
It’s been said that nobody wants to wait a year to kill a single boar, but I say the notion that you need to complete quests to play the game only bolsters the linear theme park experience- and is what’s slowly killing us all.
Creating situations where the outcome isn’t always the one predicted… That’s a world if I’ve ever seen one…
Imagine this:
You enter the starting zone, met by a sea of people. The road is occupied by a swath of people dancing and doing whatever, seemingly in the way of your quest, so you take a left.
And what you find is some spot a little more quiet- a tree- and a few people sitting around it. You lean in, and hear they’re talking about venturing to some faraway place. They notice you and look up.
“Wanna come?”
Next thing you know, you’re corpse dragging MILES across the barren desert- diving off ships and swimming deep beneath seas, or escaping from city guards- but you don’t hate it.
Quests and all the various game mechanics should live in perfect harmony and balance with this type of gameplay. They should serve the experience, and not the other way around.