I was reading a post by Lore that apparently I had forgotten about. He said: “To that end, we do believe that some form of sharding may be helpful, especially in those early days.”
I don’t like that ‘especially’ in those early days. It kind of opens up the notion they might use it for things other than the early days. Obviously that’s contrary to what Ion said, but admittedly I’m a bit paranoid about this. I agree with the OP (for the most part): sharding, if used beyond the very initial launch period and starting zone, will sink Classic.
By the way, I think even sharding launch is a very bad idea. But it’s pretty obvious they’re going to do it. Ion keeps talking about how they want as few servers as possible.
I swear, arguing with the rabid NOSHARDINGOMGROFLCOPTER people is like bashing your head against a brick wall. I really, really hope you people are just trolls and you aren’t literally so petty that you’d be willing to sacrifice server communities to get your way.
I don’t want my server to be dead because half of the population left a month after launch to go back to BfA.
I don’t want my server to end up being a “Connected Realm” because its population fell too drastically after half the population left a month after launch to go back to BfA.
I don’t want server merges to force me to rename, lose my guild, lose my friends, lose my community.
Suck it up and deal with sharding at release.
It’s not going to kill you.
The zones will still be packed and you will still have to fight for mobs.
You will see everyone you missed after you leave the starting zones.
Yea it could be a somewhat weaselly way to say that sharding “should” only kick in for launch week starting zones, since that is when they expect the pop thresholds to be exceeded…
But in reality, if the pop thresholds are ever exceeded for any reason, then sharding will kick in.
well when you literally have conflicting reports from two separate high ranking people, what do you expect?
nothing either of them has said guarantees sharding will be 1-10 and removed within a few weeks.
we got some vague statements.
until blizzard comes out and gives us concrete answers people will rail.
By the way the anti-sharding folk are trying to enforce community, not give it up. Because who the heck would think having sharding would help bring the community closer together?
If the starting pop on classic release is something your worried about, having to wait for a boar, getting killed in world, etc. Then your a tourist to begin with. Having any form of sharding that isn’t an instance area will destroy classic as it is the opposite of what most people that actually played vanilla want. It turns a set realm community into a fortnight style lobby where people just come and go so fast that there isn’t a reason for anyone to play with an established group. Sharding removes all world pvp due to the natural population shifts between zones where it normally occurred.
Here’s the thing, and I’ve said it several times, if sharding is being used for server stability…those issues are going to continue to crop up well beyond launch. What do you do when there’s hundreds of players in Southshore vs. TM? Or any kind of big battle? Or AQ event, or…whatever. Because sharding isn’t a solution; it’s a bandaid, and it’s one that kills community and immersion and the sense of being part of a virtual world.
So I’ve personally accepted that they might have to use it for Ion’s reasoning, which is that they expect a lot of players, and then a large exodus. Which means they’d need a large number of servers (without sharding) to accommodate that amount of players, which if a good number of people left would lead to dead servers. I don’t think that’ll happen, but at least it makes some logical sense.
However, the technical excuse of server stability isn’t something that’s going to go away, so if it’s being done for that reason…sharding will be used elsewhere. And then I’ll be elsewhere. 14 years of history has proven you can’t give Blizz an inch.
The diference is that at launch you need to hook up people to play in the server they choose otherwise they will leave to less populated servers and once tourists leave, you will have a low pop/dead server. While in AQ event, you have already invested so much time in your character to just shoulder on through the lag and disconnects.
NO to anything that kills community-based gameplay.
And most of all NO to sharding since it is among the most socially-lethal “features” from modern WoW that has NO place near authentic Vanilla gameplay.
I reject anything that removes Vanilla gameplay from being FIRST - ESPECIALLY sharding.
Truthfully, not at all. I expect this person to be gone by the time sharding is turned off, anyway. I can’t imagine them being able to handle a world that isn’t empty and having to compete for things.
That implies stuborness and childlike behaviour, not the kind of people I want to play with in classic.
If blizzard decides to implement sharding as a permanent feature and outside of the starting zones, then you will see me angrily ranting on these forums about how they ruined everything.
![:notes:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/notes.png?v=6" ":notes:")