For those against sharding at launch

[Auddoras-stormrage]

You said you don’t want to miss anything.

If sharding is in you can miss a lot.

Let’s say a massive player event is going on and you cannot be apart of it because you are sharded to place where it’s only you and some random gnome.

[Laeric-wyrmrest-accord]

It was likely a player event I wasn’t invited to so it doesn’t really matter that much, does it?

[Matcauthon-steamwheedle-cartel (Matcauthon)]

Umm… you split up the value of a few black lotus among a hundred people it’s really not worth their time.

“a few” and i wouldn’t just be farming lotus alone. i’d be farming other stuff like thorium or leather. easily make a couple hundred gold in an hour.

So maybe a gold a person? They could do better simply not helping you spawn shards. And that’s assuming that they were already planning to farm gold during that time.

Those leveling/casual guilds? Guess what their member are doing? Leveling and dungeons.

that’s just what i would make myself. obviously the other farmers would be farming there own stuff too.

Ziryus you can say what you want, but it’s obvious to literally EVERYONE that sharding is exploitable. no sharding past launch.

Except it’s obvious that trying to exploit sharding on a single server with no CRZ is a hugely time consuming effort that doesn’t generate enough returns to make it worth the effort.

You are pretending that someone can just click a magically create new shard button, which you kind of can in retail because of CRZ. Without CRZ trying to spawn new shards just to farm resources would be a complete waste of time.

it would entirely depend on the threshold blizzard uses for its sharding to kick in.
if they use retail thresholds then i could abuse it quite easily. less then 2 full raid groups and sharding kicks in.

[Matcauthon-steamwheedle-cartel (Matcauthon)]

It was likely a player event I wasn’t invited to so it doesn’t really matter that much, does it?

this just shows your lack of awareness about vanilla.
you know how many times a random pvp event just started and then via the various channels others heard about it and boom you have a couple hundred people are all pvping? no real invitations just a general server wide call to arms?

[Auddoras-stormrage]

Player events happened randomly sometimes in Vanilla by accident.

Why do you think south shore is famous?

[Katerina-mannoroth]

My contention with Blizzard’s (and your) consideration of using sharding in this restoration project is this: if the goal of this project is to restore 2006 WoW so that if someone took a very long nap and woke up today and started playing WoW, they would notice a very disturbing difference. Sharding is a major (and social gameplay killing) difference. It was definitely NOT part of 2006 WoW. It would be VERY noticeable to someone from 2006 who would see fewer players around them all appearing/disappearing as ghosts

Which is part of why the key part is properly implemented, which in the context of Vanilla/Classic WoW means sharding isn’t “a thing” until you’re dealing with a zone population that is in the hundreds. Which aside from the capitals, was very much an exception, not the rule.

Somebody from 2006 logging into a Classic WoW server and seeing 130 players, from either faction, running around a specific sub-zone casting spells and “doing things” in the game would be freaking out. They’d be even more freaked out if there was no lag or other significant problems. In some ways it might be a “good kind of freak out” but they’d be thinking they just stepped into the Twilight Zone all the same.

As to it being a social killer. /Yawn

CRZ is a social killer because it signicantly expands the “pool” that you’re operating in. Sharding can be a social killer, particularly if the shards are sized too small. And Blizzard is certainly guilty of liking their shards to be small in Retail.

That said, the more important factor from the social side(ignoring the economy aspect for simplicity), is that Sharding does not get used as a means to extend the player population beyond a certain threshold where the number of players on the realm becomes so high that everybody ends up “lost in the crowd.” Doubly so when a lot of that crowd is invisible due to things like sharding.

[Ziryus-doomhammer (Ziryus)]

Umm… you split up the value of a few black lotus among a hundred people it’s really not worth their time.

“a few” and i wouldn’t just be farming lotus alone. i’d be farming other stuff like thorium or leather. easily make a couple hundred gold in an hour.

So maybe a gold a person? They could do better simply not helping you spawn shards. And that’s assuming that they were already planning to farm gold during that time.

Those leveling/casual guilds? Guess what their member are doing? Leveling and dungeons.

that’s just what i would make myself. obviously the other farmers would be farming there own stuff too.

Ziryus you can say what you want, but it’s obvious to literally EVERYONE that sharding is exploitable. no sharding past launch.

Except it’s obvious that trying to exploit sharding on a single server with no CRZ is a hugely time consuming effort that doesn’t generate enough returns to make it worth the effort.

You are pretending that someone can just click a magically create new shard button, which you kind of can in retail because of CRZ. Without CRZ trying to spawn new shards just to farm resources would be a complete waste of time.

it would entirely depend on the threshold blizzard uses for its sharding to kick in.
if they use retail thresholds then i could abuse it quite easily. less then 2 full raid groups and sharding kicks in.

Current zones support more than 80 people per shard.

And oh yeah you’re still talking about coordinating 80+ people for any extended period of time.

[Laeric-wyrmrest-accord]

I’m really the wrong person to be using PVP arguments on. I hate PVP. With a burning white hot passion that’d put the sun to shame. They could remove it from the game and I’d be happier than a pig in slop.

That said… yeah I can see how that would kill all enthusiasm.

[Katerina-mannoroth]

but we want as many people as we can get. which leads back to the original question.
you want to not deal with queues. how do you balance that when you have high pop servers?

You use Sharding to maximize the number of players that can get into the game and reach level 10 to 20. You want to minimize queues here, because a substantial portion of “the tourists” are going to quit before they hit level 20.

You use Server Queues to encourage people to leave/server xfer after the level 30+ population starts “getting out of hand.”

It isn’t rocket science.

[Matcauthon-steamwheedle-cartel (Matcauthon)]

Umm… you split up the value of a few black lotus among a hundred people it’s really not worth their time.

“a few” and i wouldn’t just be farming lotus alone. i’d be farming other stuff like thorium or leather. easily make a couple hundred gold in an hour.

So maybe a gold a person? They could do better simply not helping you spawn shards. And that’s assuming that they were already planning to farm gold during that time.

Those leveling/casual guilds? Guess what their member are doing? Leveling and dungeons.

that’s just what i would make myself. obviously the other farmers would be farming there own stuff too.

Ziryus you can say what you want, but it’s obvious to literally EVERYONE that sharding is exploitable. no sharding past launch.

Except it’s obvious that trying to exploit sharding on a single server with no CRZ is a hugely time consuming effort that doesn’t generate enough returns to make it worth the effort.

You are pretending that someone can just click a magically create new shard button, which you kind of can in retail because of CRZ. Without CRZ trying to spawn new shards just to farm resources would be a complete waste of time.

it would entirely depend on the threshold blizzard uses for its sharding to kick in.
if they use retail thresholds then i could abuse it quite easily. less then 2 full raid groups and sharding kicks in.

Current zones support more than 80 people per shard.

And oh yeah you’re still talking about coordinating 80+ people for any extended period of time.

funny becuase i’ve seen it sharded far below that.

[Matcauthon-steamwheedle-cartel (Matcauthon)]

I’m really the wrong person to be using PVP arguments on. I hate PVP. With a burning white hot passion that’d put the sun to shame. They could remove it from the game and I’d be happier than a pig in slop.

That said… yeah I can see how that would kill all enthusiasm.

you may, but your wanted change is affecting more then just you.

[Fesz-cenarius]

but we want as many people as we can get. which leads back to the original question.
you want to not deal with queues. how do you balance that when you have high pop servers?

You use Sharding to maximize the number of players that can get into the game and reach level 10 to 20. You want to minimize queues here, because a substantial portion of “the tourists” are going to quit before they hit level 20.

You use Server Queues to encourage people to leave/server xfer after the level 30+ population starts “getting out of hand.”

It isn’t rocket science.

So, sharding til before level 20 since you say that’s when the tourists leave and queues from 30+?

What happens between those two?

[Matcauthon-steamwheedle-cartel (Matcauthon)]

but we want as many people as we can get. which leads back to the original question.
you want to not deal with queues. how do you balance that when you have high pop servers?

You use Sharding to maximize the number of players that can get into the game and reach level 10 to 20. You want to minimize queues here, because a substantial portion of “the tourists” are going to quit before they hit level 20.

You use Server Queues to encourage people to leave/server xfer after the level 30+ population starts “getting out of hand.”

It isn’t rocket science.

we aren’t talking about sharding launch anymore katerina. we’re talking about sharding after launch.
basically laeric doesn’t want to wait in queues to play the game. at all. ever. during or after the launch window.
if that means sharding after launch? he’s all for that.

[Laeric-wyrmrest-accord]

Hence, “Yeah I can see how that would kill all enthusiasm.”

[Auddoras-stormrage]

Think of this small events happening all around but you cannot see ppl due to a sharding.

Example

1. Gnome runs past you in West fall with pillagers chasing him/her. You have options to save him/her or watch him/her die.

The small events give you lols or a new friend/enemy. That is what will be missed.

Like missing a Leroy jenkins moment.

[Laeric-wyrmrest-accord]

But I’d prefer a different solution.

[Laeric-wyrmrest-accord]

But… I still have those events WITH sharding.

[Ziryus-doomhammer (Ziryus)]

Umm… you split up the value of a few black lotus among a hundred people it’s really not worth their time.

“a few” and i wouldn’t just be farming lotus alone. i’d be farming other stuff like thorium or leather. easily make a couple hundred gold in an hour.

So maybe a gold a person? They could do better simply not helping you spawn shards. And that’s assuming that they were already planning to farm gold during that time.

Those leveling/casual guilds? Guess what their member are doing? Leveling and dungeons.

that’s just what i would make myself. obviously the other farmers would be farming there own stuff too.

Ziryus you can say what you want, but it’s obvious to literally EVERYONE that sharding is exploitable. no sharding past launch.

Except it’s obvious that trying to exploit sharding on a single server with no CRZ is a hugely time consuming effort that doesn’t generate enough returns to make it worth the effort.

You are pretending that someone can just click a magically create new shard button, which you kind of can in retail because of CRZ. Without CRZ trying to spawn new shards just to farm resources would be a complete waste of time.

it would entirely depend on the threshold blizzard uses for its sharding to kick in.
if they use retail thresholds then i could abuse it quite easily. less then 2 full raid groups and sharding kicks in.

Current zones support more than 80 people per shard.

And oh yeah you’re still talking about coordinating 80+ people for any extended period of time.

funny becuase i’ve seen it sharded far below that.

And I’ve seen it not shard with more than that.

Admittedly sharding is a weird tech, but that also makes it that much harder to abuse as you can’t really control something if you don’t actually know how it works.

[Auddoras-stormrage]

You would have less.

[Laeric-wyrmrest-accord]

I wouldn’t be able to tell, though. And as far as I know, anyone randomly disappearing in front of me is probably just DC’ing due to crap internet or something.