I thik there may be some people who do not undertand how it works, but most understand exactly how it works.
It artificially separates the player base, leading to mobs, quest objectives, resources and other players randomly appearing and disappearing all around you. It also frequently leads to being one of very few people (if not the only person) in a given area, even if there are dozens of other players in the same spot in another shard.
It’s that artificial separation of the player base that many oppose, especially since it is so diametrically opposite to the vanilla experience.
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We know how it works. We’ve also watched the damage it’s done to the WoW server communities alongside CRZ.
We want to avoid that happening again. We want to be able to walk out into the world knowing there’s a good chance we’ll run into the same players we saw the day before. We want strong communities to form.
Playing FFXIV has really rammed home for me how destructive CRZ and sharding has been to WoW. It’s great being able to log on, show up for a hunt train or S rank and have the same people there that were there the day before even though everyone is split up into a dozen different parties and know that they will be there again tomorrow. It’s great when a rare epic FATE is found and a relay spreads quickly throughout the community so everyone can show up and be in the same place doing it together without worrying that someone will get pushed to a different shard. It’s great to find people going out of their way to help out new players who don’t know what things are or how they work.
Just as I was about to post this, a relay went out that an extremely hard to catch 2 part FATE was active with only few minutes left before the first part failed (which would have prevented the second part from spawning). A small group rushed there to complete it before it failed then waited patiently 15 minutes for additional relays to go out so more players could get there. There were over 30 players that got their first time completion achievements once we did the second FATE.
It’s been a long time since WoW has had a player community that cooperative in getting things done. Everyone grabs what they can as fast as possible and moves on.
Classic is a chance for that sort of community to be built again. It won’t happen if sharding is used.
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There are some players that see every other player as nothing but an obstacle in their way, yet complain about the “toxic community” in WoW.
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when did wow retail put in sharding? as far as i know its very recent. and its not sharding that made retail go so far downhill.
lack of talents or class diversity, crossrealm raids and dungeons, LFR/LFD, realm “merging”. this is what killed wow for me. sharding??? don’t care about sharding if they do it how they say they will (only at the start for the first while in the starting zones).
Sharding may just be another brick in the wall, but it is still every bit a brick. Allowing things that suck to be repeated simply because they are not the biggest thing that sucked is dumb.
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Well how can we have any pudding if we dont eat our meat?
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Sharding is needed unless you want to merge 10 servers into 1 about 2 weeks after launch when the bulk of the live players go back to live.
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Sharding is not the only reason that retail is in the state that it is. They are among the long list of things that were detrimental to the game.
Sharding and CRZ’s definitely contributed to and vastly accelerated the decline, though.
All one needs to do is to spend a brief amount of time in retail to see the effects of CRZ’s and sharding and how they negatively impact community.
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I wouldnt say that is a concern because we know it will happen.
The concerns I have for Classic are:
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Why did Blizzard make Classic? They can say anything they want, but if the “patches” of classic drop when retail is in a content drought, the purists are screwed.
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Expectations: I worry people will not be happy once the meta starts to set in. This meta will be fixed and never changing. I doubt Blizzard will do any “hot fixes” besides game breaking mechanics/bugs once the game goes live.
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Retail Crowd: I honestly fear the retail crowd is being highly looked over. If Blizzard does make Classic a stop gap for retail, the retail crowd will be very dominant and a lot of the retails social interactions will be within classic. I worry the retail crowd will take over the pug environment due to them getting to 60 quicker than those who want to take their time. I also fear Blizzard may do other things to keep retail playing classic to keep people playing the game.
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End goal. Where does this re-release go? Blizzard has 2 more xpacs they can do this with. No one will be lining up to play anything after WoTK. If they release TBC server will it require you to go from scratch and keep the Classic server space or would it just overwrite it. I see people say they should allow you to transfer your character, yeah I’m sorry but I can’t see that happening.
My issue with sharding in classic is simple. We have seen blizzard make promises about it before and fail to keep those. So while in theory they put it in for a short period of time to help with numbers, we very well could see it’s continued use.
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Unprovable assumption is unprovable.
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Just a heads up to the community managers/MVPs in here. In relation to OP’s question, there is a very legitimate concern about burn-out for guilds that plan to raid and want to do somewhat competitively. If Molten Core is released at launch, many progression-minded players may feel the need to level from 1-60 very fast, which is a grueling process that should be enjoyed and not rushed.
Are there plans to put in a “grace period” for leveling before raids become available? This was first put in for Mists of Pandaria to allow players to enjoy leveling without feeling rushed, and some private servers have done this to positive reception by not releasing Molten Core right off the bat.
My guild has been considering raiding in Classic upon release (even some of us that no longer play the live game), but having to rush to 60 would be a big detriment to the experience.
I would love to see a month or more before the release of what has been labeled as “Stage 1” content release (Molten Core, Onyxia, Maraudon, and Dire Maul). It worked originally because there was not much notion of what raiding was supposed to be, but it could be simply too much for many people that want to raid to feel forced to play to reach max level and get into Molten Core.
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I would think there could’ve have been if DM and Mara were not tied to stage 1 as well. Putting those dungeons in at a later time makes no sense. Could they reshuffle their release plan? Maybe? But I fear their plan closely resembles that of retail release i.g. they want to maximize the wave of people going into classic and playing those new stages.
Example being Classic(Stage 1) is launched 1 1/2 months after 8.2, Stage 2 is dropped after 1 1/2 months of 8.2.5… and so on.
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Maraudon and Dire Maul were released after Molten Core, but before Blackwing Lair. Dire Maul contains very powerful pre-raid items, some of which are better than items from Molten Core. Not to mention, Dire Maul also drops the book that starts the quest line to get Quel’Serrar, which is the best tanking weapon aside from Thunderfury until the end of Naxxramas.
I would love them to stick to an authentic patch cycle in terms of order, but Molten Core at the beginning is far too much time investment for people that want to raid progression.
Oh I know but we’r getting 1.12 not 1.0. Big difference here. 1.12 without DM or Mara is not 1.12.
I can understand them releasing raids slowly, but not having all the dungeons in 1.12 is a bit of a stretch.
Mostly everything until Naxx is going to pretty simple anyways if they don’t retune anything.
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The tuning is also a concern, for sure. I would like to see raids re-tuned, personally, because 1.12 talents will blow down everything in the first week up until Naxxramas because of the massive DPS gains.
That said, staged content release is the perfect opportunity to use time to re-tune raids.
People will run into mechanics where people will have to use their brain by the time they hit AQ (and a couple in BWL), so that may stop everyone from immediately steamrolling the content. Molten Core has very, very simple mechanics where leveling to 60 first and having good gear will be far more effective in clearing the raid first than being particularly good at the game.
That is what I’m concerned about, having to get to 60 and farm gear rapidly without having time to enjoy leveling.
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I honestly believe you won’t need to farm too much gear to clear MC. Like you said DM has some equivalent gear. But also why would you have to rush to raid? This is a personal choice no? Just as someone people don’t even care about leveling and just want to raid, why punish them?
Well, honestly, it’s not about Molten Core. It’s about getting the gear from Molten Core to get a leg up on clearing all the bosses in BWL in as few lockouts as possible, to get as many lockouts in AQ, to get as many lockouts in Naxx. The faster you clear Molten Core, the more gear you get down the line, and it all cascades.
The reason this is so important is Naxxramas has very steep requirements in terms of gear, and you have 40 people to gear.
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Ooh I know, but there is no time table here. There is zero reason to rush if you’re not going for server firsts. The raids will still be there.
Oh, for sure. You’re right. But those of us that do want to get server firsts would like to not have to quit or get fired from our jobs.
It would probably be in the best interest of everyone, that way. More people get to see and enjoy more content.
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