Just this morning alone I have been sharded several times while waiting for portals in Durotar. Sometimes I just walk a few yards up the hill out of the middle of the “arena” and both of my characters are popped into a dead shard. Sometimes I’m standing still watching the 10 seconds countdown on a portal with a decent amount of players around and I’m randomly placed in a new dead shard with a 5 minute wait time on that portal (why they aren’t at the same time anyway is weird). The shards I’m removed from are not that heavily populated. Maybe this was their answer to reduce server lag at events? If so, it’s terrible.
I was fighting the world boss in the Emerald Dream earlier and this health was low enough he was on the cusp of changing to friendly status and the whole raid group was popped into a new shard where the boss was at 100% and we had to start over.
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Welp, a kind individual listed their group when the Karokta event started, and the moment I joined we both went to a new shard neither of us had been in that was barely 4 minutes old.
Soon after a bunch of other people phased in around us as well.
Edit: Another today, logged into a 30-minute old shard, was actively fishing in the pool behind Myrrit in Loamm when I was shifted to a 5-minute old shard. /shrug
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Sharding is still a huge f***ing problem. Every week, trying to complete Fyrakk’s Fury is a nightmare. Today, I got to 50%, and then the shard changed and the bar was reset to 0%. Next attempt, the bar got to 70%, and then right after I burned 5 Wards of Fyrakk and got the miniboss down to about 80%, the shard changed again in the middle of combat. On the third attempt, I finally got the bar to 100% and Fyrakk started flying in. I went to where the boss will land, switched to my healing spec, and poof the damn shard changed again.
When will this nightmare end?
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Same exact thing happened to me this morning.
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Tried making a Fallen Charger raid on fresh shards three times this evening. Every time we were bounced to an old shard at the 10-11th invite after camping for 30-40 minutes. If I dropped group, closed the game and came back in I’d be on a fresh shard with 3-8 minutes on the clock.
Gave up after the third try, wasted a lot of people’s time.
Dropped into a 38-minute old Maw shard, ‘Ok! I just won’t invite anyone off shard and…’ nope, next time I looked I was on a 5-minute old shard.
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As far as I know, Blizz hasn’t responded to the issue of sharding. Makes one wonder if people start mentioning it on some of Blizzards own posts they might actually address the issue. Or remove everyones comments. Let’s find out!
More World of Warcraft Experiences to Come (blizzard.com)
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I think maybe WoW’s new AI is evolving and throwing a temper tantrum.
Here is something that was posted in a tread in bug report .
Guild was farming cobalt assembly rep and we got phased to a new shard every 5 minutes it felt like. Half done a pack only for everything to disappear and respawn. Worse yet I was on a priest with shadow crash on CD so I couldn’t even fight back properly until my cooldowns came back up.
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How are you seeing how many minutes old the shard is?
There’s an addon called NPC Time that shows how long an NPC has been alive in their tooltip, and also includes a bunch of targetable/interactable items like grappling points in the Maw. You can also check permanent NPCs like Ve’nari to see how old the shard is.
It’s super handy. Just wish I didn’t need it for this in particular, lol.
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Waiting at Karokta for half an hour. Karokta spawns. I arrive a minute late from kitchen chores. I rush forward. None of my abilities go off. I spam like crazy. Karokta is below a quarter health. The battle before me fades. I am in a 5-second old shard, having not tagged Karokta.
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That’s specifically about Classic and their goals for SoD, however.
Blizzard broke sharding in retail when they screwed with Rares in FR/ZC so they despawned if not pulled within 15 minutes. Something they did when they did that resulted in what we’re experiencing now. So it all went down like this:
They purposefully overtuned the Rares to be ridiculous and require a large group, unless you want a 20-minute slog on a tank spec.
The consequence to this is barely anyone did them because they weren’t worth getting a group and going to the effort for. Resulting in a dozen+ Rares up at one time for hours on end.
Not wanting this to be so obvious with maps full of said Rares, because why own up to a mistake and simply retune them to be less obnoxious like literally thousands of players have begged, they change them so they despawn after 15 minutes unless they’re pulled and in combat. Hey look, the maps are no longer full of Rares! We swept the problem under the rug!
In doing this they break sharding badly. So badly it’s now impacting countless players and seriously degrading the gameplay experience for everyone. It is flat-out ruining so many activities it feels pointless to every try them anymore. In an attempt to boost metrics they ruined the gamplay experience.
Months go by, Blizzard is still radio silent and haven’t even acknowledged it (for retail.) Players continue to have their gameplay impacted and frustration continues to build.
This is, sadly, pretty typical of the company these days.
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In the Zaralek Caverns, killing a rare. Huge health pool, so it’s take some time even with all the people.
It vanishes when we get it down to somewhere around 20-25 percent health. Just poof, gone. All the corpses of the mobs we cleared towards were replaced with full health mobs all at once.
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Happened a few times in the last couple of days. Notably in the middle of an elemental storm, I was sharded from a fully populated zone to a zone with no one present killing mobs - this happened twice in separate zones.
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that happens to me in dragonflight content like recent content.
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I have been sharded multiple times in elemental storms for no reason. Sometimes even when I’m literally in the middle of killing mobs.
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After some consideration my suggestion is:
-Manually be able to change shards in the zone main hub(much like other mmos), can only do it 10 times an hour with a 5 min cd after a shift.
- Able or disable autosharding as a toggle option
This would literally fix every open world content problems, including WM stuff.
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I have countless memories just in the past few weeks (countless meaning probably 15) of being sharded in the middle of doing some event or some such. And those are only the memorable ones. I can’t tell you how many times I THINK I’ve been sharded but can’t be sure. Can’t give you times or dates or anything … so …
I’m just going to start recording here every time I’m sharded. If they are truly looking for exact info then they will get PLENTY of it from me.
Date: 4/08/24, 7:28 pm eastern time
Server - Stormrage
Character - Jugglla: Nightelf Deathknight
Location - Restless Wetlands in Waking Shores
Activity - Questing: Specifically fighting Smogglmoggl while on the quest.
Got his summoned Tsunami dead and had him down to approx ~25% HP. Sharded into a fresh zone with Tsunami and Smogg at full HP.
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Ive been sharded out in the middle of mining a node.
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