As a player who started in Vanilla and played through Wrath of the Lich King, I must say that I'm incredibly excited for the release of classic servers. After playing the demo and watching the various streams and videos on the topic, I felt the topic of sharding was important enough to express my opinion.
Right up front, I'm completely against the idea of sharding. I understand it helps with server stability and eases the player experience when competing for limited resources; however, those positives are completely outweighed by losing some of the most epic memories I have of WoW.
Just take a look at some of the most iconic videos from the Vanilla period. Things like the horde ganking an alliance funeral procession, the paladins vs. shamans event, the shenanigans around world bosses between factions and guilds, parties and raids fighting at the entrances of instance portals, and of course large-scale world PVP battles (Southshore, STV, etc). These are only a handful of events that would never have happened, or been much less memorable, with the sharding technology.
Were some of those experiences frustrating? Sure, I didn't enjoy getting camped in STV by horde players. However, after asking for help from other alliance members in the local chat and watching them come to my aid and beating back the horde players, and usually camping them, was a great feeling. These challenges, whether PVP or PVE (limited mobs) related, provided a real sense of accomplishment when completed. I would argue that real sense of accomplishment can only be had when a player has had to struggle and work for it. It is even more rewarding when these challenges are overcome as part of a team, party, raid, and faction. You feel like you're actually part of something larger than yourself in the world of Azeroth. Even stupid things like extreme lag and servers crashing on the first few days are acceptable, and even necessary, to recreate that original experience and challenge. The "walking six miles uphill through snow both ways" thing, it's just something players don't experience with the modern, polished WoW.
11/02/2018 03:39 PMPosted by LoreAs you've noticed, the Classic Demo does have realm sharding. This is to let as many people as possible experience it without technical issues such as server capacity or spawn density getting in the way.
Longer term, we know how crucial it is to the Classic experience for you to see your friends when you walk into Stormwind or when youâre helping them on a quest youâve already completed. And there should only ever be one Kazzak on a realm, no matter how many people are waiting for him to spawn.
Weâre still looking at how we can best deliver an authentic Classic experience at launch, and in the weeks and months that follow - both in terms of gameplay and community. You wonât see phasing (which is tied to specific quests that don't exist in Classic) or cross-realm zones (which combine multiple realms together) in Classic. However, realm sharding is one of the best tools we have to keep realms stable when hundreds of players are swarming the same initial few zones and killing the same few mobs (like they will be at the launch of Classic). To that end, we do believe that some form of sharding may be helpful, especially in those early days. But we recognize that a cohesive world is critical to WoW Classic and are committed to bringing that to you.
It's ok to shard for launch, but it will need a true 1 month or so timer on it, if not I will leave my level 11 huntard and stop paying after the 1 month sub is done. Sharding truly is the OPPOSITE of a vanilla experience, it actually does destroy the entire concept and all the dev work would be for nothing.
I never said the french guys developed the game, I said they a group of unpaid nerds who in their spare time created a server that could support 20k players on a single realm, but blizzard can't create a classic realm without sharding in 201811/03/2018 06:02 AMPosted by Gingi11/03/2018 05:57 AMPosted by BeardhatRIP Classic.
How hard is it?
A bunch of french guys who had to recode the server tech from scratch could do it, why can't you?
You act like they developed the game. Huge difference in developing and opening a private server.
Sharding even the starting zones is a bad idea. Many people will stick around and fight for mobs, and form groups. Many people will decide to explore for exp. Many people will solo and leave to start professions.
This creates opportunity for PLAYER INTERACTION. Sharding destroys this! Some people won't even meet. Don't say it's for stability, with technology now there should be NO EXCUSES.
You think we don't Blizzard, and every time you screw up we say it again. WE DO. We want the crazy rush to level 10 for that first talent point. We want the janky moonwalking animations, wall jumping, and all the stupid elements of vanilla. But most importantly we want the COMMUNITY back.
This creates opportunity for PLAYER INTERACTION. Sharding destroys this! Some people won't even meet. Don't say it's for stability, with technology now there should be NO EXCUSES.
You think we don't Blizzard, and every time you screw up we say it again. WE DO. We want the crazy rush to level 10 for that first talent point. We want the janky moonwalking animations, wall jumping, and all the stupid elements of vanilla. But most importantly we want the COMMUNITY back.
11/03/2018 06:04 AMPosted by Gingi11/03/2018 05:59 AMPosted by Ellilaine...
Sure it is... It's not like we couldn't find plenty more examples of similar gameplay affecting incidents on live if we cared to but keep drinking the Kool-Aid...
Itâs not drinking kool-aid, itâs being optimistic. You all are upset about a DEMO. We are 9-10 months away from release and you all are acting like youâve already invested in the game. Donât like it, donât play it. You literally have lost nothing.
We aren't that upset about a demo, we're upset about the blue post basically stating they are going to be using sharding. Did you even read it before jumping in here to save Blizzard from the evil pro-actual vanilla crowd?
So you are keeping sharding??? Blizzard are you just trying to destroy your own game???
Ppl say I hate sharding... blizzard states we may have it at the beginning...
Remember a hard head makes a soft behind.
Be humble and sit down. The new blizzard crew need to get back to what WoW was 2005 blizzcon. You need to take that pride and throw it away.
You are literally doing the opposite of what consumers want.
It took 14 years to get the same game that most wanted for years. Now you are trying to destroy it? Pserver prove that ppl donât like playing on Russian servers but weâre forced to. Just so they could a similar version of vanilla wow.
Ppl say I hate sharding... blizzard states we may have it at the beginning...
Remember a hard head makes a soft behind.
Be humble and sit down. The new blizzard crew need to get back to what WoW was 2005 blizzcon. You need to take that pride and throw it away.
You are literally doing the opposite of what consumers want.
It took 14 years to get the same game that most wanted for years. Now you are trying to destroy it? Pserver prove that ppl donât like playing on Russian servers but weâre forced to. Just so they could a similar version of vanilla wow.
11/03/2018 06:02 AMPosted by Gingi11/03/2018 05:57 AMPosted by BeardhatRIP Classic.
How hard is it?
A bunch of french guys who had to recode the server tech from scratch could do it, why can't you?
You act like they developed the game. Huge difference in developing and opening a private server.
It still shows a much better vanilla experience was produced by people working for free. Everyone hopes classic works but for the demo to have so many differences is just sad. They literally could have just launched Nostalrius as the "demo" and it would have been 90% better. Too many things seem like they did not even try to make it original, just hope they are using mostly placeholders but a summer launch makes that iffy.
Going for a nap letâs pick this up tomorrow.
11/03/2018 06:05 AMPosted by Oskar11/03/2018 05:03 AMPosted by GingiThe over reaction from the community is hilarious, itâs a demo. If they had not released a demo and just had screen shots/panel you would not be satisfied. So they threw together some gameplay to show the progress and you all stomp your feet and cry about everything thatâs wrong. Literally no pleasing this community. You wanted classic, theyâve hired an entire dev team devoted to delivering it to you and you still arenât satisfied.
Well, that's the WoW forums for you. It's been that way since launch. Some people just focus on the negative and they'll look until they find it. The demo may not be the 100% authentic classic experience, but the forum delivered that in spades lol.
Underrated comment
...
These actiblizz white knight will accept anything. If you want to let them piss on your leg and tell you its raining that's on you. Don't expect the vast majority to be okay with it though.
Keep being angry, at the end of the day youâre the one upset.
And you keep slurping away, in the end its your chapped lips.
11/03/2018 05:49 AMPosted by SengaliI've never played on a private server. I've played since mid 2005 and watched this game change through the years. I saw the post-Wrath mass exodus of players and how it changed the community and the servers I've played on.
I've been cautiously optimistic that Blizzard might get Classic right and give me the community experience and depth this game has lacked for years, but sharding is a no-go, not even for a second, not even for starting areas, not ever.
More troubling to me and others is copied below from a reddit thread -
[quote]The thing that concerns me more than sharding is the inherent design philosophy that must be behind this decision. They're looking at the point of sharding from a totally different perspective to players.
Their opinion is "players hate crowded zones and fighting over mobs, and we have this technology that we can port over from retail to fix that."
Meanwhile they don't realize that crowded zones are part of the experience. To me it just shows that after all these petitions, all the publicity, they still don't get it
Instead of approaching Classic from the perspective of "this is an amazing game that we're going to recreate exactly as it was", they're approaching it from "Okay so people like the game, but we can make an even better game if we add all this cool stuff we've developed over the years to fix all the problems with vanilla. That will make it even more amazing, right?"
They still don't understand what makes Vanilla special, and they still think retail is a better game. THAT is what concerns me most.
This; precisely this.
I think Blizzard finds the whole Vanilla Community incomprehensible, and may be trying to put their technocratic heads around the longing that aging players have for Vanilla WoW As It Was.
Above all considerations, the Classic Development Team needs to di something like Bill Clinton did when running for President in 92. Clinton carried around a hand-made sign that he taped to the bathroom mirror of every hotel he stayed in on the campaign trail: âItâs the economy, Stupid!â
To all Blizzard Classic Developers: Make your signs for your bathroom mirrors, and for the restroom mirrors of your little cubicles at the development office:
âClassicâs Vanilla, Stupid!â
11/03/2018 06:04 AMPosted by Gingi
Itâs not drinking kool-aid, itâs being optimistic. You all are upset about a DEMO. We are 9-10 months away from release and you all are acting like youâve already invested in the game. Donât like it, donât play it. You literally have lost nothing.
People were optimistic about the BfA Alpha as well...
...and the beta...
...and the pre-patch...
...and the release...
You see where I'm going with this?
[quote="207684003601"]so weâve decided to also add dungeon finder and raid finder...
We know how crucial it is to the Classic experience for you
Weâre still looking at how we can best deliver an authentic Classic experience
Wouldnât even be surprised.
#notmadjustdisapointed
I believe this might be my first... maybe second post ever on the WoW forums? I've had a bnet account for 20 years and my WoW account is dated 12/04. I guess I could have been checking in sooner?
Haven't really read much beyond the first couple of pages, I just wanted to say a quick piece and then maybe on my way. Hope this is the OK place for that. Let me first say I quit playing shortly into Wrath. The game just... as you may have heard before, it wasn't the same. I suppose it's a lot like love. You just feel it for what it is. Especially for myself, someone who loved World PvP, PvP and did some light raiding as an alternate on the schedule. I had a couple friends offer to buy me an expansion on release, like Warlords for example. Dabbled for a week or so just like with BFA. But nothing ever felt the same. When they weren't on it felt like a single player RPG. Certainly nothing wrong with that, but it wasn't the experience that made me love the game when it first came out. I realized this was beyond the "rose colored glasses" of nostalgia. Anywho....
I think it's great seeing all these names on here, and so many more elsewhere, not only intending on playing Classic but genuinely excited for it. I'm talking beyond the "just give it a try" or to "see how it was". So many people who started in the 2nd or later expansions are actually wanting to see how the original grind was. I make no mistake of it, 1-60 was a grind at times. But that was the beauty of the game - you earned it. The community, playing with friends and making a few in game friends as well. The time spent just to get to 60, the work put in with quests, profs, dungeons, gear, etc etc... it was something of a journey. But a great one because when you logged in you felt like you always had something to work on. Not only just that but the memories created from the rare combination of a great game, and a lasting user experience only made possible by a unique community. I remember the first time I hit 60, with the very Hunter that you see next to this post. I was grinding mobs at Tyr's Hand, listening to Tool and couldn't wait for their next album. I could tell you about the XR fights, the Horde marches to IF, the AQ opening world event (totally caught me off guard, I didn't go to sleep until 4am)
Blizzard gave many a taste of that when they tried to re-create TM vs SS in a battleground. I think they realized then what was missing (in a sense) I'm proud in a very strange way to say I lived those fights as they had happened organically when vanilla was the retail offering. And it wasn't for achievements either. I didn't get some title or points for fighting on the road in Hillsbrad. I did it because it was fun and the game truly felt like an US vs Them narrative.
I'm rambling but I see the activity on this particular side of the board and can't help but to feel excited. I've gotten a couple messages and texts from people who honestly haven't picked up any kind of video game in a couple years, just to tell me they want a computer strictly for Classic. I'm also reading about the Sharding. I'd like to think the Devs and programmers at Blizzard are a solid and bright group of people. I want to believe they'll have a solution. I do remember some of the loot lag in the early days during the early zones, and it was pain at times. Perhaps a combination of dynamic spawn rates and maybe "cascading" player creations? Not sure the best word to use here but have time allotments for character creation and initial leveling, and space those alloted times out by an hour or 2. Should give most people enough time to get out of Coldridge, then into a larger zone like Dun Morogh. Either way the solution is beyond my pay grade and knowledge. Server size around 4.5k would be sick as well. Don't tell me you don't look forward to PvP groups fighting over Devilsaur Skins. I don't think I would mind the first zone being sharded but anything beyond that might suck. I'm content seeing the old school LFG channel will prevail over random match making buttons. I look forward to seeing Barrens chat, Hunters needing ammo, locks having to farm shards, and the wonderfully frustrating things that made this game great.
Most importantly I look forward to seeing all of you out there.
Haven't really read much beyond the first couple of pages, I just wanted to say a quick piece and then maybe on my way. Hope this is the OK place for that. Let me first say I quit playing shortly into Wrath. The game just... as you may have heard before, it wasn't the same. I suppose it's a lot like love. You just feel it for what it is. Especially for myself, someone who loved World PvP, PvP and did some light raiding as an alternate on the schedule. I had a couple friends offer to buy me an expansion on release, like Warlords for example. Dabbled for a week or so just like with BFA. But nothing ever felt the same. When they weren't on it felt like a single player RPG. Certainly nothing wrong with that, but it wasn't the experience that made me love the game when it first came out. I realized this was beyond the "rose colored glasses" of nostalgia. Anywho....
I think it's great seeing all these names on here, and so many more elsewhere, not only intending on playing Classic but genuinely excited for it. I'm talking beyond the "just give it a try" or to "see how it was". So many people who started in the 2nd or later expansions are actually wanting to see how the original grind was. I make no mistake of it, 1-60 was a grind at times. But that was the beauty of the game - you earned it. The community, playing with friends and making a few in game friends as well. The time spent just to get to 60, the work put in with quests, profs, dungeons, gear, etc etc... it was something of a journey. But a great one because when you logged in you felt like you always had something to work on. Not only just that but the memories created from the rare combination of a great game, and a lasting user experience only made possible by a unique community. I remember the first time I hit 60, with the very Hunter that you see next to this post. I was grinding mobs at Tyr's Hand, listening to Tool and couldn't wait for their next album. I could tell you about the XR fights, the Horde marches to IF, the AQ opening world event (totally caught me off guard, I didn't go to sleep until 4am)
Blizzard gave many a taste of that when they tried to re-create TM vs SS in a battleground. I think they realized then what was missing (in a sense) I'm proud in a very strange way to say I lived those fights as they had happened organically when vanilla was the retail offering. And it wasn't for achievements either. I didn't get some title or points for fighting on the road in Hillsbrad. I did it because it was fun and the game truly felt like an US vs Them narrative.
I'm rambling but I see the activity on this particular side of the board and can't help but to feel excited. I've gotten a couple messages and texts from people who honestly haven't picked up any kind of video game in a couple years, just to tell me they want a computer strictly for Classic. I'm also reading about the Sharding. I'd like to think the Devs and programmers at Blizzard are a solid and bright group of people. I want to believe they'll have a solution. I do remember some of the loot lag in the early days during the early zones, and it was pain at times. Perhaps a combination of dynamic spawn rates and maybe "cascading" player creations? Not sure the best word to use here but have time allotments for character creation and initial leveling, and space those alloted times out by an hour or 2. Should give most people enough time to get out of Coldridge, then into a larger zone like Dun Morogh. Either way the solution is beyond my pay grade and knowledge. Server size around 4.5k would be sick as well. Don't tell me you don't look forward to PvP groups fighting over Devilsaur Skins. I don't think I would mind the first zone being sharded but anything beyond that might suck. I'm content seeing the old school LFG channel will prevail over random match making buttons. I look forward to seeing Barrens chat, Hunters needing ammo, locks having to farm shards, and the wonderfully frustrating things that made this game great.
Most importantly I look forward to seeing all of you out there.
11/02/2018 03:07 PMPosted by RĂśzenIts a demo. A lot of the stuff is clutter left over from the legion client.
The phasing can be explained by the sheer number of players trying to play the demo. Its smart. There are only so many servers. Hopefully it will be gone in the actual game.
The increased regen could be because they want us to be able to play within the time limit. If we had to spend so much time eating we wouldn't get anything done in the time limit. I wish it wasn't there to make it more accurate but it could also be left over and not taken out yet.
As far as how fast we are killing things? Did you notice your level compared to the mobs we were killing? We out leveled the content. In Classic when you get to westfall you won't be 15. You will have those quests well before 15. You won't be killing a group of 4 on a rogue like I was. (Evasion ftw).
It's a demo guys. This is NOT a finished product. We still have the Classic Panel and the WoW Q&A. I'm sure some people will ask questions about it. I do wish they had said something about it rather than let us panic. Give it time.
Don't abandon ship until the game comes out. Don't listen or even give the trolls here attention. It just encourages them.
Hey OP D-bag The blue confirmed you were wrong and Sharding will be used pretty much "whenever they feel like it"
Let me point out the flaw in this, you're setting a precedent for sharding to be used when ever there is server congestion or high traffic. That means, AQ40, Naxx event, people hunting each other down, rivalries between raid guilds. Anything that causes server stress. Will be sharded. Vanilla is nothing with out it's community. It needs community like you and I need oxygen.
I've said this on the EU forums but right now the developers are testing us to see what they can get away with. We need to let them know that the servers were capped at 2.5k for a reason, the philosophy of the old team is completely different to what they currently have at Blizzard. They don't seem to understand that the servers are meant to be a villiage atmosphere. This is a core tenant of vanilla, an actual community.
Sharding turns people in to etheral objects, ghosts, that pop in and out of thin air. You do not interact with them on any meaningful level, it's often third or fourth time you meet someone bonds start to form. There's actually a psychological set of rules that were posted elsewhere on the US forums and I can find them if you want but essentially sharding is bad. It has you to treat other players like ghosts in Dark Souls.
I want to get to know my community. I want to know x the terrible hunter, or y the rogue, I want to know the guy that always ganks people and griefs, the drama lama that kicks things up on the forums, the servers best enchanter. Good and bad, I would take server queues and the occasional crash rather than a DOA community. BFA has this "Raiding, for raiders, by raiders! Nothing else!" mentality garbage we don't need it here. Sharding is the most anti-fun system and out of touch system I've ever seen implemented in MMOs.
P.S. Nostalrius a group of HOBBYISTS were able to pull this off. Russians and czech DO THIS FROM THEIR BASEMENT. Blizzard are not a small indi company they are a MULTI-BILLION DOLLAR corporation. They can do this. Stop making excuses for them otherwise THEY will cheap out on us.
I've said this on the EU forums but right now the developers are testing us to see what they can get away with. We need to let them know that the servers were capped at 2.5k for a reason, the philosophy of the old team is completely different to what they currently have at Blizzard. They don't seem to understand that the servers are meant to be a villiage atmosphere. This is a core tenant of vanilla, an actual community.
Sharding turns people in to etheral objects, ghosts, that pop in and out of thin air. You do not interact with them on any meaningful level, it's often third or fourth time you meet someone bonds start to form. There's actually a psychological set of rules that were posted elsewhere on the US forums and I can find them if you want but essentially sharding is bad. It has you to treat other players like ghosts in Dark Souls.
I want to get to know my community. I want to know x the terrible hunter, or y the rogue, I want to know the guy that always ganks people and griefs, the drama lama that kicks things up on the forums, the servers best enchanter. Good and bad, I would take server queues and the occasional crash rather than a DOA community. BFA has this "Raiding, for raiders, by raiders! Nothing else!" mentality garbage we don't need it here. Sharding is the most anti-fun system and out of touch system I've ever seen implemented in MMOs.
P.S. Nostalrius a group of HOBBYISTS were able to pull this off. Russians and czech DO THIS FROM THEIR BASEMENT. Blizzard are not a small indi company they are a MULTI-BILLION DOLLAR corporation. They can do this. Stop making excuses for them otherwise THEY will cheap out on us.
After sleeping on it and rethinking the blue post I am ok with limited sharding. As long as its just for the first few days when everyone is logging in at the same time and in the same few zones. Rereading the blue post it sounds like thats is what they are planning. Give people a few days to do their own thing and go their own way. I think come day 4 or 5 in release there should be no sharding and none at all in the capitals. I can understand people worried over this it is a very slippery slope but I just wanted to give my two cents.
Please Blizzard, please..I beg you, NO SHARDING! I'm ready to live with any of the other changes introduced in the demo (even though I stand for NO CHANGES), but sharding is the biggest showstopper for me (and I would guess quite a bit of people based on the reception so far).
I played the demo yesterday and my initial reaction when logging in for the first time was "why is the Barrens empty ?? There should be way more players at the Crossroads...". I initially calmed down, because I was sure that it was because I was lucky and must have got on the servers before everyone else or maybe I had selected THE server that had the lowest population out of the 20 servers. 1 hour later, while killing Scytheclaws and Plainstriders near the entrance of The Crossroads and not seeing much people around me I started to worry.
The day before the demo, I had envisioned just gridding and killing mobs in the Barrens with a couple of hundred or at the wildest of my hopes a couple of thousand other players and this would be the HIGHLIGHT of the demo and of my long wait for WoW Classic. This would bring me back to that time in Vanilla when community was the most important aspect.
What I played yesterday was NOT this. The only way I can sum it up is that I was playing a SINGLEPLAYER game. The Barrens never felt more lonely in my life...and I was honestly in disbelief. For the announcement of WoW Classic, I recently decided to give WoW retail a try with the Starter Edition (permits you to level toons to lvl 20) freely. I just wanted to get back into the lore and world before hand, knowing full well that the experience I would get would be FAR different then the experience I would get playing the WoW Classic demo. I leveled up 5 or 6 toons to level 20 on the Starter Edition just to try out the various classes and to see the various starting zones.
I am sad to say that the experience I got with the Starter Edition of WoW Retail and the WoW Classic demo was almost the same. I got a HUGE sense of loneliness and that I was just playing in my own little world by myself. SAD ! What a huge let down ! In fact, I was almost double checking at one point that I had not mistaken myself and booted up the WoW Retail Starter Edition instead of the WoW Classic demo.
Please I beg of you, no sharding !
I know the WoW Classic team is under huge pressure to make this RIGHT and I still believe they can. I'm just amazed and SAD to see that they included this DEMO in the Blizzcon Virtual ticket. I know it's a demo, but still it is a first look of a product they have been working on for ..I believe more then a year, unless I'm mistaken. I'm sorry to say this, but it's a huge letdown. What I played yesterday seemed more like a quick rehash (2 weeks prior to the demo) of the Starter Edition of WoW for a demo of WoW Classic. I don't know what led to this decision internally at Blizzard, however I think it was a very bad decision. Yes, things can change before launch and there's still a lot of work to be done and yes this was only a DEMO. However, a few days / weeks prior to the demo, my confidence level in the team and WoW Classic was pretty HIGH in delivering what the players really want. The confidence level has gone down quite a bit.
Hopefully today will get more information at the panel that will restore faith in the player base for WoW Classic.
My best regards.
I played the demo yesterday and my initial reaction when logging in for the first time was "why is the Barrens empty ?? There should be way more players at the Crossroads...". I initially calmed down, because I was sure that it was because I was lucky and must have got on the servers before everyone else or maybe I had selected THE server that had the lowest population out of the 20 servers. 1 hour later, while killing Scytheclaws and Plainstriders near the entrance of The Crossroads and not seeing much people around me I started to worry.
The day before the demo, I had envisioned just gridding and killing mobs in the Barrens with a couple of hundred or at the wildest of my hopes a couple of thousand other players and this would be the HIGHLIGHT of the demo and of my long wait for WoW Classic. This would bring me back to that time in Vanilla when community was the most important aspect.
What I played yesterday was NOT this. The only way I can sum it up is that I was playing a SINGLEPLAYER game. The Barrens never felt more lonely in my life...and I was honestly in disbelief. For the announcement of WoW Classic, I recently decided to give WoW retail a try with the Starter Edition (permits you to level toons to lvl 20) freely. I just wanted to get back into the lore and world before hand, knowing full well that the experience I would get would be FAR different then the experience I would get playing the WoW Classic demo. I leveled up 5 or 6 toons to level 20 on the Starter Edition just to try out the various classes and to see the various starting zones.
I am sad to say that the experience I got with the Starter Edition of WoW Retail and the WoW Classic demo was almost the same. I got a HUGE sense of loneliness and that I was just playing in my own little world by myself. SAD ! What a huge let down ! In fact, I was almost double checking at one point that I had not mistaken myself and booted up the WoW Retail Starter Edition instead of the WoW Classic demo.
Please I beg of you, no sharding !
I know the WoW Classic team is under huge pressure to make this RIGHT and I still believe they can. I'm just amazed and SAD to see that they included this DEMO in the Blizzcon Virtual ticket. I know it's a demo, but still it is a first look of a product they have been working on for ..I believe more then a year, unless I'm mistaken. I'm sorry to say this, but it's a huge letdown. What I played yesterday seemed more like a quick rehash (2 weeks prior to the demo) of the Starter Edition of WoW for a demo of WoW Classic. I don't know what led to this decision internally at Blizzard, however I think it was a very bad decision. Yes, things can change before launch and there's still a lot of work to be done and yes this was only a DEMO. However, a few days / weeks prior to the demo, my confidence level in the team and WoW Classic was pretty HIGH in delivering what the players really want. The confidence level has gone down quite a bit.
Hopefully today will get more information at the panel that will restore faith in the player base for WoW Classic.
My best regards.
I have mixed feelings about it. It would be awesome to see a couple hundred people in the starting zones on launch day, BUT I was there for the 2004 launch and I remember what a crapfest it was. I remember the long queues to get in and the frequent server crashes. There are some aspects of the classic "experience" that are best left in the past. It'll be nice to be able to log in right away at launch, have a stable server, and actually be able to complete quests in a timely fashion.
That said, I do hope that the sharding is only in the starting zones and only for a limited time after launch. I want to see a ton of people in the cities. I want to feel like a part of a big community, and people are right that excessive sharding diminishes that. But if it's used in the limited way that I described so that more people can have a decent launch experience, I'm ok with it. If they decided to not use it at all and I have to wait in a queue and endure a couple of server crashes, well, I'm ok with that too. What I won't be ok with is walking into Ironforge and seeing 30 people when there's actually a couple hundred people there.
That said, I do hope that the sharding is only in the starting zones and only for a limited time after launch. I want to see a ton of people in the cities. I want to feel like a part of a big community, and people are right that excessive sharding diminishes that. But if it's used in the limited way that I described so that more people can have a decent launch experience, I'm ok with it. If they decided to not use it at all and I have to wait in a queue and endure a couple of server crashes, well, I'm ok with that too. What I won't be ok with is walking into Ironforge and seeing 30 people when there's actually a couple hundred people there.
11/02/2018 03:39 PMPosted by LoreAs you've noticed, the Classic Demo does have realm sharding. This is to let as many people as possible experience it without technical issues such as server capacity or spawn density getting in the way.
Longer term, we know how crucial it is to the Classic experience for you to see your friends when you walk into Stormwind or when youâre helping them on a quest youâve already completed. And there should only ever be one Kazzak on a realm, no matter how many people are waiting for him to spawn.
Weâre still looking at how we can best deliver an authentic Classic experience at launch, and in the weeks and months that follow - both in terms of gameplay and community. You wonât see phasing (which is tied to specific quests that don't exist in Classic) or cross-realm zones (which combine multiple realms together) in Classic. However, realm sharding is one of the best tools we have to keep realms stable when hundreds of players are swarming the same initial few zones and killing the same few mobs (like they will be at the launch of Classic). To that end, we do believe that some form of sharding may be helpful, especially in those early days. But we recognize that a cohesive world is critical to WoW Classic and are committed to bringing that to you.
this is BS. you guys do realize that one of the biggest social aspects in launching a server is immediately meeting the people on the server and reading the new guild spams seeing who is doing what right?? that's part of the new server launch, phasing that will ruin the the first few days in the social aspect for many. many of us have 10 or more friends coming back to play and even if we pick the same server we wont be able to interact in local channels unless we are grouped. THIS IS NOT THE CLASSIC EXPERIENCE LORE!!! god damn, why cant you guys just put fricken classic as it was, stop messing with stuff. the stuff will sort itself out in a few days just like it did 14 years ago. It feel pointless telling you guys anything at all. Look at the disaster around you guys with blizzcon, boo's and all. that's all from you guys not listening or giving a crap what your audience is saying. theres a reason your seeing all the rats jumping overboard. they are the smart ones, this ship is sinking fast.....