Can someone explain sharding and the effects it has on the AH?

So I’m pretty ignorant when it comes to sharding. I admit I don’t understand it very much. To my knowledge it’s a way to manipulate or control the population on a server which in our case now, eases the swelling of the population so we’re not all on top of each other? Correct me if I’m wrong please.

Again, this could be entirely unrelated, but if that’s the case and we continue to share an AH with other players who aren’t really in our “realm” wouldn’t that create a massive saturation of items on the AH?

The reason I ask is because I’ve noticed the AH has an insane amount of multiple of the same blues or mats on a regular basis and I don’t ever remember this being the case in 2005. The market just seems insanely saturated with items, which makes them cheap and more affordable, but the downside being everybody has them. Am I smoking crack? Does this have anything to do with sharding?

Thanks

Sharding was never in Classic, Layering is, which is soon to be gone anyways.

The realms that are still “layered” does still have this issue with an absurd amount of items, etc.

its soon to be gone so dont worry, the markets will be less inflated soon

Remember, sharding is mixing other realms together.
while layering is splitting a realm into clones.

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@Oak - How is layering “soon to be gone”? As far as I know, the majority of classic servers now have layers, and I’ve not heard of any plans to start enough new servers to eliminate layering.

Thanks for the reply, man. When do they have plans to do this?

They are removing all layering by phase 2. Many realms have already had layering removed. Layering was always intended to be a temporary measure for Classic launch.

edit:

Blizz can make sharding while remaining single realm. Thats what was originally planned prior to layering.

CRZ is the cross realm zones, which wouldnt be possible without sharding