Blizzard explained why sharding was used in the demo.
They did not say they changed how that sharding worked or that the results of that sharding were “an exception” or anything but working as intended.
I literally saw the shard shift on live today. Standing in Boralus and everyone disappeared except my party and a new full city of people appeared. I didn’t move at all.
I don’t like sharding and virulently against it for what it does to server community BUT I understand it being necessary for starting zones. IF kept to those zones at and after launch for a time.
BUT… this is Acti/Blizzard… if the servers get so full and before they can get upper management to agree to spend $$$ on adding servers how do you think they will handle other non-starting zones experiencing high populations (raid on cities… huge battle in barrens, etc)… as a break-fix… sharding. And if they can save money via sharding vs. more servers which do you think Acti-Blizzard will take?
That is my concern. I am ok with it at start-up/starting zones.
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Or you and others who wants sharding can just wait until the “tourists” leave before starting? We want an authentic Classic(hectic, crowded and frustrating released included), not retail-lite with a dash of sharding.
“If you don’t like it, quit” is not how you have a successful Classic launch.
If you want to destroy the game before its starts, be pointlessly stubborn.
First of all, he didn’t say quit. He said wait. Which is a response to the pro-sharders telling people if they don’t like sharding, then just wait until it’s removed.
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Actually its an anti-sharder saying that if you don’t like queues, you can just wait because there are no shards. Without addressing the fact that their “authentic” experience will be destroyed by overcrowding.
I’ve never told anyone who doesn’t like shards to just wait. My response is specifically that they will likely not notice, because of the density of people that should be in any given shard, crowding you anyway.
I didn’t say you, I just said people because many have made that claim. And even with sharding the world won’t be empty. I’ve never made that claim. However, if the demo was an indication the threshold is ridiculously low. They were sharding with around 50 people in the area. That’s not acceptable, as far as I’m concerned. There’s a different between not wanting thousands of people jammed together in one area and sharding at a 50 cap. Whoever makes this decision needs to understand the core Classic playerbase who want a true Vanilla experience are OK with competing for npcs and nodes. We’ll deal with it.
That said…sadly I think it’s a foregone conclusion they’ll shard. Ion seemed to double down on it when he tweeted about rp-pvp servers. I believe he said something like they want to start with as minimal servers as possible and go from there. Which means sharding. To be honest, I don’t trust them to ever stop using it. Ultimately it’ll most likely drive me from the game.
It doesn’t feel very good when someone tells you to start later because you have different opinion on sharding does it?
I firmly believe sharding to be a deal breaker with a large portion of the devoted Classic players who will be the core player base for the next few years. I know I flat out won’t play Classic if sharding exists at launch.
Jebus. They already said the demo was arbitrarily low because it was more important to ensure that everyone had a chance to play than it was to provide a full system experience. It wasn’t the end result, and that’s why those of us not walking around like Classic is our personal game, are lobbying for the compromise of a small number of large shards, so that you see as many as you would have in Vanilla, not 10x that.
A large shard has the feedback effect of disappearing when its not needed too, because once the numbers drop down to the post-launch residual, the shards won’t kick in, undermining any grubby executive’s claim that they need to keep them.
Since I never did that, you’re forcing your feelings of resentment onto the WRONG PERSON. If they introduce sharding, and you feel so stubborn you have to wait, that’s your problem, but I’d encourage you to move past your stubbornness and join the rest of us having fun.
I would never want devoted Classic players to start later, which is why a 10,000 person queue is exactly what I want them to avoid. You don’t get the choice of starting now or later with no shards. Its simply 75% of people forced to wait days to play.
So if you want to be forced to play in sessions that have 5 day gaps between them, by all means, demand no shards. Because you won’t be getting 1000 servers at launch.
I would much prefer server ques, slow questing, few harvesting nodes and server crashes to sharding.
Then again Actiblizz might just try to please everyone and release “authentic” servers with no sharding and “streamlined” servers that have sharding enabled.
That’s extremely selfish and destructive to the long term viability of Classic.
Unless you think it’ll have max 25,000 players, in which case Sharding won’t kick in because no threshold is ever met.
Are you that pessimistic about the enjoyable nature of Classic?
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There are 3 elements to the launch:
- A small dedicated group who will power through the starter zones in an hour or two and be 30 within 2 days.
- An overwhelmingly large group who will try out the starter zones for a few hours, decide its too hard, and quit. Maybe half will get to the Barrens.
- A subsection who start out as just looking around, find its exciting, and stay past the starter zones.
And there are 3 possible toggles:
- More servers.
- Sharding
- Server caps
More Servers:
If you keep the Server Cap at 3000, and No Sharding, you need so many servers that the Dedicated population will be spread super thin after launch.
Server Caps:
If you increase the server cap without More Servers and No Sharding, then areas will be so congested even the Dedicated population can’t progress past the starter zones in any reasonable timeframe. This will be in no way Authentic because Vanilla was never that crowded.
Sharding:
If you introduce Sharding for the starter zones, a bunch of stubborn holdouts will either refuse to play, or delay their start until the sharding goes away. Claims of doom and gloom for the community who spent maybe 2 hours in the starter zones is simply silly.
None of the Above: If you don’t increase the server caps, don’t provide hundreds of servers, and don’t use Sharding, queues will be so long that people in the first group may have to wait days to play anyway, people in the second group will never even try, and people potentially in the third group will be so put off they never come to the enjoyment realisation. Classic will fail due to lack of numbers, even if they keep the servers on, there’ll be too many people disgusted by the “failed launch” that the populations will be too low to be viable, and Blizzard rolls up the experiment with J Allen Brack saying “I told you so.”.
Of the 4 scenarios, which one is only damaging stubborn people, and which ones are damaging everyone. This is why Blizzard will choose the Sharding option.
If you want to ensure that you have a Vanilla-like experience, you need to start demanding large shards (200-500) people, instead of demanding a failed launch.
Oh and for the “We don’t trust Blizzard” people, I want you to be clear on something.
No matter whether they use it at launch or don’t, sharding will always be sitting on the shelf ready to be used by an untrustworthy company, because the system is built on the current platform. A flick of a switch can turn it on, so do you really want them to decide to switch on “Legion Sharding” with 20 to 50 people because they never tested or designed anything else, or lobby them with “Vanilla Scale Sharding” to get 200 to 500 into a shard so that everyone’s experience is authentic. Telling them not to plan and test it on launch means when the brown stuff hits the ceiling mounted oscillator, you will get Legion Sharding.
Off-topic, but I always figured the oscillator in question is the mobile one that you set on the floor.
I always assumed it was some sort of explosion where the oscillator was above it and it got that high.
Yeah I kept figuring someone threw it at the floor-based one and it got sprayed across the room.
So if group 2 doesn’t try (which would be this big tourist looky lou bunch right?) We won’t even need sharding at all. Group 3 may not either he? Sounds like less reason for sharding so yea. Let’s go with
Lol.
Realistically I know blizz won’t though. They will shard the start zones depending on the launch rush. Hopefully that is it.
Well, if Group 2 doesn’t try, then the sharding compromise that reasonable people are proposing will never engage, meaning you get to have your cake and eat it.
But again, are people really pessimistic about the launch of Classic? I thought the purists claimed it was the masterpiece of Gaming Experience, and sharding would destroy it. If its so wonderful, why do you act like no-one will like it?