Having sharding in classic will destroy this franchise

[Nescience-tichondrius]

You’re calling Blizzard tourists.

Since there is literally only 1 employee still at blizzard working on wow that was around during classic, yes they are all tourists.

[Megustab-area-52]

Classic launch day will not be the same experience as vanilla’s. It will be closer to a private server launch.

[Michaél-lightninghoof]

i think no server sharding is better

[Izae-lightninghoof]

In my opinion the best solution would be to release more realms in proportion to player demand.
Servers that are full or close to it can be labeled as such, and then players can decide accordingly if they would take a
more or less crowded realm. That way the integrity of server community is kept, which is a huge point for classic
WoW. I think it has the power to be a game changer. This approach overall is more concrete and less
‘simulated’ than simply sharding when a threshold is reached.

[Eloraell-moon-guard]

Classic launch day will not be the same experience as vanilla’s. It will be closer to a private server launch.

Definitely not going to have 5000 people in a zone with dynamic respawns. That’s not available on Blizzard servers. Its queues or sharding.

[Nechross-eonar-37277 (Nechross)]

@Eloraell-moon-guard

No-one arguing against sharding (including yourself) is actually proposing something that will meet their stated diametric goals of a smooth launch and long term stability without sharding.

Why don’t you make an argument instead is stating absolutes?

Here is an anthology of players against sharding. It is my own Wall of No to sharding.

Sharding puts Vanilla gameplay second (anti-sharding anthology)

Gameplay FIRST. Source: Blizzard Mission Statement Edit: at the end of my post is a list of links I have found on how harmful the community feels sharding will be on authentic Vanilla gameplay. If you would like to include a link, post it below and I will add it to the OP. Thanks for reading. The gameplay of Vanilla WoW was all about community. It created a place “where everybody knows your name.” In modern WoW gamplay, no one cares who you are, largely due to sharding and other moder…

In it, I refer to an alternative from to Black Desert Online and proposed by a number of streamers.

My own solution? This is Vanilla. How about use a Vanilla solution? Queues. Additional Relams. Transfers.

I would choose those solutions over sharding, always. I am not willing to sacrifice Vanilla WoW gameplay (community is everything) for the sake of a cloud-based player population management technical solution.

[Nescience-tichondrius]

I would rather have a que time of 2 weeks, and actually not be able to log in for 2 weeks, than have sharding.

[Eloraell-moon-guard]

Since there is literally only 1 employee still at blizzard working on wow that was around during classic, yes they are all tourists.

Tourist isn’t “Someone who didn’t play during Vanilla”. Its someone who only plays during the first 1-10, maybe to 20 then quits. Sheesh, keep up. Even Blizzard uses the term for that.

[Nescience-tichondrius]

Tourist isn’t “Someone who didn’t play during Vanilla”. Its someone who only plays during the first 1-10, maybe to 20 then quits. Sheesh, keep up. Even Blizzard uses the term for that.

That’s exactly my point.

[Eloraell-moon-guard]

I would rather have a que time of 2 weeks, and actually not be able to log in for 2 weeks, than have sharding.

That’s nice. Blizzard has specifically stated that they want a smooth launch unlike Vanilla, without crashes or long queues.

And they’re the ones developing the game. So if Sharding means you won’t play, can I direct your attention to Pantheon instead of spewing bile in the Classic forums?

[Dokta-gurubashi]

Again - if server caps remain Vanilla

What was that cap, do we know? Google is saying 2.5 to 3k?

[Eloraell-moon-guard]

What was that cap, do we know? Google is saying 2.5 to 3k?

Mark Kern said 2k with a flexible ceiling.

[Megustab-area-52]

Classic launch day will not be the same experience as vanilla’s. It will be closer to a private server launch.

Definitely not going to have 5000 people in a zone with dynamic respawns. That’s not available on Blizzard servers. Its queues or sharding.

Neither will be a constant influx of players who where discovering the game like it was in vanilla.

My point is that it will be closer to a private server launch, because people will want to leave that zone as soon as possible, it will not be this magical experience where people form groups and talk to each other, people are gonna zerg rush the starter zone.

[Eloraell-moon-guard]

Neither will be a constant influx of players who where discovering the game like it was in vanilla.

It’ll be at least 2-3 million people trying to get in on the Tuesday and the weekend.

[Nescience-tichondrius]

I believe the cap has been 2k or so for a long time. I had a 3 day que time during wod release, and a 1day que time during legion release. So riddle me this, what exactly does sharding accomplish if the thinking is that it is “que time or sharding”?

Just curious

EDIT: I actually couldn’t play the first 5 days of legion due to the que time.

[Dokta-gurubashi]

Mark Kern said 2k with a flexible ceiling.

Now, that must be old tech right? I have to imagine they will need to have sharding, or the servers will die if thats still even close to the limit.

At least on release/early zones.

I had a 3 day que time during wod release, and a 1day que time during legion release. So riddle me this, what exactly does sharding accomplish if the thinking is that it is “que time or sharding”?

Just curious

EDIT: I actually couldn’t play the first 5 days of legion due to the que time.

wow, thats nuts. So the limits must still be there. I dont know, I’ve been away from the game so long, looking up old servers I used to play on their forums are just dead and silent.

Is that just a most recent thing, or was the game still very active during Legion for example?

[Galdor-maelstrom (Galdor)]

Since there is literally only 1 employee still at blizzard working on wow that was around during classic, yes they are all tourists.

How do you know this? Also, where’s your PvP title, tourist?

[Rikzip-greymane]

PvP title here. Blizzard knows what’s best.

[Fesz-cenarius]

And that philosophy is apparently to set no actual limits, leaving sharding throughout the game in perpetuity open as an option.

No it isn’t. They said they know its antithetical to the server community of Classic. I’m sure if they could find a better way to do it without sharding, they will. Which is why I’m interested to hear from them. But since none of us can come up with it, we’re working on the basis that their investigation came out the same.

No-one arguing against sharding (including yourself) is actually proposing something that will meet their stated diametric goals of a smooth launch and long term stability without sharding. They’re literally just saying “I’m going to have a tantrum if the server doesn’t burn”.

Have they set any definitive limits for sharding? NO, they have not.

Have they consistently REFUSED to set ANY definitive limits? YES, they have.

Have they stated that they number of servers will be “on the lean side”? There have been claims that they have, although I have not seen any links to confirm that claim.

If they do plan to keep the number of servers “on the lean side”, what exactly is “on the lean side”?

Even if they estimate the population stabilizing at 100,000, that would require at least 34 servers to keep server caps at 3,000, assuming an even distribution of players.

I suspect that the stable population will far exceed 100,000 players, which would require even more servers to maintain that vanilla pop cap of 3,000.

I doubt that they would consider even 50 servers to be “on the lean side”, but that is just my opinion.

I am concerned that they will not have enough servers to handle the number of players without extensive use of sharding, especially since even retail cannot handle more than 50 or so players in a given area without problems. If it were possible to simply raise the shard populations to 200-500 players, why would they not have done that for retail?

[Khronor-gnomeregan (Khronor)]

At the risk of sounding incredibly cliche…

Trust is earned, not given.

Blizzard has done nothing in recent years to earn the trust that they have lost from many players. Announcing classic is a great step. But until it has been released, and we see what they have produced, nothing has been earned.

When blizzard says things like “we just want to change ____ for ____ amount of time” we have to ask ourselves, where does the line get drawn? If they change this aspect of classic, what’s to stop them from changing something else they deem necessary?

Everyone knew CRZ was going to be garbage. We told them over and over we don’t want it from the fiasco we witnessed on the first servers plagued by it. Just merge servers. And blizzard being blizzard took the “We know best” approach. CRZ was buggy, it gave the illusion of a full sever with offering none of the benefits. It killed the AH of small servers that were connected to large servers before they changed how resource looting worked. It drove another nail into the coffin of server community/identity.

Blizzard has to stop taking the “We know best” approach and truly listen to what its customers are saying to them. We do not want server sharding. We do not want any form of phasing that separates players outside of what was present in Vanilla WoW. Give us what we asked for. Nothing more, nothing less.