For those against sharding at launch

[Eloraell-moon-guard]

Just to reiterate Blizzard’s statements about why they’ll use Sharding at launch.

@Velwind-moon-guard

We recognise that launching WoW Classic poses a couple of meaty challenges.
Unlike launching a traditional game that’s brand new, where you can assume that everyone that’s jumping in there on launch day has the intent to at least explore playing it long term, we expect that early on with Classic, there are going to be some people who are there die hard, dedicated, they’re racing to defeat Ragnaros and Onyxia.
There are going to be others who just want to check it out casually and they just want to see what all the fuss is about, they want to see what they missed.
And, our concern is, I think it’s exactly as you suggest, what’s that going to look like? What’s that going to do to realm communities , as some server populations may dwindle over time ?
That is where we are looking at using sharding in a very limited way .
We understand, and I understand completely, that sharding is antithetical to a cohesive Classic community.
We are competing over limited resources. When Lord Kazzak is up, and guilds are racing to defeat him, there needs to be only one Lord Kazzak. You’re trying to get, you know, if you’re trying to lock down the thorium vein spawn in limited sections of the world, you should be competing over limited resources.
That said, when everybody is packed into Valley of Trials, when everybody is packed into Elwynn, we think we can use sharding there in a limited, time limited way, to solve the initial launch day load problems, while making sure in the long run, that as server communities solidify, there’s a healthy population as single worlds for everyone to live in.
Source:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-GobXQTf6w

They know that there should only be one Kazzak. They know the Devilsaur Mafia should be allowed to form, so we can eviscerate it later. They know that there should be limited access. The know that the server community being able to see each other is important.

But they also know they need to have a relatively clean launch in order for the product to do well.