Unlike some of you checking out this forum post, I started playing in Wrath of the Lich King (WoTLK). Although I never had a “vanilla” experience of World of Warcraft, I am very excited to play, and my friends and I are working with each passing day to gather people and prepare things for our guild.
As the years progressed from WoTLK to the current expansion there is no doubt that Blizzard has made a lot of changes, some of which the community adored and found absolutely riveting – while other changes were vastly disliked. In my opinion, each change brings forth its own topic for debate or contention such as Looking for Raid, Looking for Dungeon, and the Transmog system. With that being said, out of all the changes I have witnessed I must say that I find the implementation of sharding, realm hopping, and connected realms to be among the worst ever implemented.
I remember the first time I ever approached the Lich King on top the Frozen Throne, that moment was truly amazing! I thought to myself, “This game is so massively successful because the lore is amazing, and the raids do a great job reflecting the concepts discussed within the lore.” As time continued to progress, I kept revising my initial thought of what I personally thought made the game amazing. It wasn’t until the implementation of sharding that I really began to understand that this game was great because of the sense of community it worked to build.
When I first started playing, I felt like Azeroth was a massive place, wherever I went there were so many people fighting over mobs and talking in general/trade chat. I often found people “hanging out” in particular areas across the world and we would group and talk to one another in order to coordinate what quests we wanted to complete while benefiting from group mob tagging. I remember going into trade chat and searching for hours in order to create a group to complete a dungeon or a raid. While we were forming people would talk to each other, we would head to raids, and along the way encounter a group of enemy Horde. The Horde might have wiped us but then we would call for reinforcements and wipe them, and the cycle would continue for hours. People would hearth back to Orgrimmar and create counter raids because defeat was just to bitter to swallow. These interactions would almost always lead to a forum post where people were calling out others and challenging them. Through the forums, people would create scheduled world PvP events, entire raids on people they disliked, and much more.
Although not all of these experiences are affected by sharding, I do believe World of Warcraft Is now in a state where you can be successful without ever having to talk to anyone. I can do a world quest with a click of a button, I can join a dungeon with a click of a button, I can join a raid and get high item level gear with a click of a button – and while afking. Back when there was no sharding, people were held accountable for their actions, whenever you did something you worked towards building a name and a reputation for yourself. If you were a known player, people would walk past you in Stormwind and recognize your name. On my server, there were a handful of really good raiders and I remember people used to worship them, talk about them, and go to them for advice all the time because they proved themselves in our realm community. In addition, this community filled with players who had these amazing reputations aspired you to work to get a reputation like that as well. I remember thinking to myself, “I want to be as well recognized and popular as this guy, what can I do in order to achieve that?”.
Now I personally feel like there is no sense of community within the current state of the game. Whenever I walk past someone in Stormwind, it is never the same person twice. People don’t have reputations for themselves anymore because they are instantly phased into a different shard upon logining in the game or changing zones. A few months ago, I created a raid to attack Orgrimmar and kill Sylvanas, while we were fighting her at least fifteen Horde came to try and stop us. While we were fighting Sylvanas and the Horde, we magically got put into a different shard of the world with no Horde and had to restart the fight against Sylvanas. We ended up killing Sylvanas in an empty Orgrimmar that solely consisted of players from our group. Whenever I go out of my way to try and spark rivalries or interact with people, I feel like they just get sharded away…
I’m writing this post today because I’m worried that Blizzard may not understand the detrimental effect sharding, cross-realm zones, or realm hopping and can have on the classic community. In my personal opinion, the older versions of the game are so well perceived because of the sense of community that is built within them. If sharding is enabled on classic realms in any way, shape, or form it will absolutely destroy the community and the overall experience. I attended Blizzcon last year and I heard Ion Hazzikostas talk about their current plans for sharding. At the moment, we know that Blizzard is thinking of enabling sharding for low-level starting zones at launch to offset massive server load. Although this situation in itself may be a contentious point of topic, I’m more concerned about the precedent it might set for future experiences in classic. If there are 400+ people in Silithus for the opening of Ahn Qiraj, will Blizzard decide to enable sharding? If 100+ people are battling outside of Molten Core, will Blizzard decide to enable sharding? If the choice arises where blizzard has to choose between a moderate amount of server lag or sharding will they choose sharding every time?
I fully disagree with the concept of sharding and I would not like it to be seen at all in classic, even on launch. My main reasoning for this is how the basis of the system works to destroy server community and divide us up instead of uniting us.
I am genuinely curious to see what the community position is on this topic, do you think sharding should be present at all in classic? What effects do you think it will have on the community? Additionally, do you think Blizzard will choose to enable sharding on a zone in the future because the sheer amount of people in the area will cause lag even though that destroys the authentic classic experience?