And word got around fast if you were a douche.
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And people complained on the forums about the login qeues even back then.
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Validly. Queues are bad for the game, despite what some people want. But just because you want to avoid one bad thing, doesn’t mean you introduce a far worse thing (or introduce it in a way that’s far worse).
The no shard argument is valid. The “let us play” argument is valid.
The only solution will be compromise, and thankfully, only Blizzard has to make the choice.
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Sure, I’m not in disagreement there. But what choice should it be? What choice WILL it be? I’m pretty sure that’s what people want clarification on now.
I’m pretty sure Blizzard hasn’t decided and is watching these discussions to see what people prefer, before making their choice.
Well, based on their past news announcements, I’m willing to believe this is in fact the case.
One (variant) option with some legs is they spawn multiple realm servers with a linked name database (so they can be merged seamlessly, no realm surnames) and see where things go from there.
They can delink realms and form new (“future merge”) groups as the situation warrants, and do it in a behind the scenes, backdoor way that Players need not even be aware of. At least until they pull the trigger and merge the realms together.
That said, unless they aggressively advertise pre-release, I expect word of mouth advertising is going to give them a pretty solid in-flow of players that will likely to be able to nearly match the rate they’re losing players for several months. You might actually see a gradual net increase in the number of players overall.
If they advertise, there is potential to be a big “wave” that will come rolling in at that point as well. As mentioned by others in the forum, there are former WoW players that are still unaware that Classic WoW is even in development. Among the ones that do know, there’s a decent number that have no idea its due out this summer.
A lot of things come down to how well Blizzard implements things. If they do well, they could ultimately have a large MMO on their hands, it’ll just take awhile to build back up. but if they do poorly, you’ll have vacant servers everwhere and need to start merging them.
In the biggest irony, some of those same people who try it, hate it, and complain about it to others may actually end up being some of the better advertising for WoW Classic depending on what specifically they’re complaining about.
We’ll have to see. Won’t we. 
I did, and did so then. They view sharding as an evil, but a potentially necessary one. They also know “the community” is rather Gollum-like in how much they profess they “hatess it” so any discussion about has best be handled very carefully.
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great post.
my thoughts: provide the option of sharded or not sharded and automatically put new to wow players on sharded. this way if a veteran wow player realizes no shard is just not fun afterall, they have the option re-roll on sharded rather than coming to the forums to complain. and it provides no shard for veteran players who prefer the massive multiplayer environment over the quality experience, even if that means login queues.
other possibility is to make the sharding function slightly differently, as follows:
rather than creating an invisible shard in the ether, have the sharding function create a shard named _______ (fill in server name) followed by the number in which it was created (example: stormrage2, stormrage3). THEN have the shard itself be listed in the server options in a drop down. say you’re looking at the server list and decide you want to play on stormrage. when you click stormrage it says its full and locked to new players, but theres a drop down menu that spawns from it that shows stormrage2 or stormrage3 are only medium pop. then as population evens out, these will be merged back to stormrage proper. and a pop up would spawn explaining that, selecting stormrage2 will eventually merge with stormrage. in other words, it’d stop sharding.
for example.
First few weeks after a new server is established until there is strong evidence that “the toursit wave” has passed on out to the proverbial sea. I’d half-way expect the initial servers to be setup on release will be on server login queues after the first week.
How about this. Make a server named Carebearland, shard the Hell out of it, and leave the other servers as authentic Vanilla experiences?
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Paradox Interactive doesn’t use much in the way of DRM, and their titles can be played offline. Of course, the 13,465 DLC’s are another matter…
Or… you can stop being a typical elitist with your “Carebear” nonsense.
Well, considering this convenience mindset that players can’t be bothered to deal with competition for quests and resources means that the massively will be taken out of the mmo…I’m a little resentful, to be honest.
But is there something wrong with having a choice between sharded (temporary) servers, and completely non-sharded ones?
No offense, but you havnt even listened to what he is saying and talking about. Its going to be fine. . We understand your passion on this… But please… Lets move on.
The only problem I can see with that offering, is that Blizzard has never offered such offerings in the past when it comes to other things the community is split on. I see no reason why that would change now.
And no one’s arguing for “convenience,” unless you count simply being able to log into the game and play a “convenience.” Or unless I’ve missed someone actually complaining about having any competition whatsoever…
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EXCUSE ME?!
Don’t you dare assume how others will act in a personal level based off of a simple observation over the years.
I TRIED staying subbed through the BS that is sharding with what it did to my server but it killed the game for players like me. It’s been half a year since I’ve been unsubbed and of all 14 years of WoW that is the longest time I’ve been unsubbed.
I TRIED to keep up support for Blizzard because I always thought that they would know what is best or eventually realize and change things for the better. I can’t even sit with my DISCO item up and chill with others without a sudden BAM SHARDED AWAY moment.
I have no respect for that sort of talk like you know exactly what others will do against their own words when you know very little of them. If Blizzard puts in permanent sharding tech that alters the overall Classic experience I WILL NEVER BUY NOR PLAY A BLIZZARD ANYTHING EVER AGAIN out of sheer distrust and spite ALONE. I DEFENDED THEIR DECISIONS FOR A DECADE only to be done with it! This is my last chance with Blizzard. If they do it right then good, if not then fine I’ll be done with all of this.
dynamic respawns seem to be a better way than sharding, because mobs/nodes/players won’t just disappear on me randomly when I’m trying to interact with. It’s a much healthier experience.
You’ll be here as well. I based my observation off of the fact he had already bent on allowing sharding the first few weeks. Also we were talking about one additional day of sharding. So scurry back into whatever hole you crawled out of.