How to use SHARDING the Right Way

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
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DON"T

That being said bottleneck is going to be rough in the starting zone the the next zones like westfall, silver Pine forest, and Darkshore. The first 2 months after launch blizzard should shard these zones to let the game be playable, but sharding needs to be done right.

First off a zone should not shard till it is so packed that players are lining up for respawns. If a zone shards it should still fill full. A zone before sharding should not just fill lived in, but fill packed. Let the full zone encourage players to group for quests.

If zones in the level range of westfall stay packed to the point of sharding longer then 4 months then blizzard should open up more servers. It is clear that WoW classic is bigger then expected.

Zones in the level range of Duskwood should only shard, if the other zones in that level range are not packed, if that zone is over 500 players. If the other zones are not getting used as much then it is a player choice to level in the one zone. If this is the case the zone should only shard once to keep it over crowded so players will need to spread out to the other zones. Sharding should only be seem as a last ditch effort to keep a server healthy.

If many of the zones in the level range of duskwood are over populated then ALL SHARDING SHOULD GET TURNED OFF ON THE SERVER! The server is full. Using the lack of sharding in the low level zones will lessen the desire for players to stay on that server. This will get players to move onto a lower populated server.

Sharding is gross. Sharding is a mess that needs to get cleaned up as soon as possible. I don’t see how anyone would be happy knowing they have sharded till they get it cleaned up. At level levels sharding can be expected, but by level 30 sharding should be a clear sing something is wrong. Sharding at 50 or higher should be embarrassing. How can the economy work if everyone is sharding? Those zone should remain limited resources. I can’t keep this up anymore, basicly sharding is like pooping your pants and you don’t want to do it.

Sharding at levels higher then 30 will be bad for server economies. End game trade items should remain rare, and sharding frees up too much room for farmers to flood the market.

I don’t want sharding, but if sharding is going to be used let it be used right. Let sharding be a tool to let servers grow when they would be bottle necked, but turn sharding off when a server gets too big to keep new players out.

Please people lets make some noise to let blizzard know we don’t want sharding. We don’t want shards to be small groups if they need to be used, AND WE ABSOLUTELY DO NOT WANT SHARDING AT HIGHER LEVELS AT ALL.

If sharding lasts longer then 4 months blizzard really needs add more servers because classic has gotten to be bigger then anyone has expected.

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No sharding of contested zones.

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What you’re proposing is reintroducing the very problems that sharding solved.

Here’s the classical MMO launch (not restricted to WoW):

  • Game launches with X realms
  • X realms fill to capacity - constant crashing and queues result from overpopulation
  • Relief realms open to handle the excess populations
  • Server performance stabilizes over the next few days as queues thin out and world servers cease crashing
  • Within 2-8 weeks, each server declines in population and the lowest pop servers now feel like ghost towns because higher pop servers can support new players as they trickle in and devs now have to consider merging the dying realms.

The most important thing to a realm is long-term player retention. Sharding allows you to mitigate launch woes with high player counts, without selling short the longevity of population retention. Launch issues are simply that. Once you’re outside the launch window of Classic, this is no longer an issue.

I appreciate everyone’s concern that Blizzard might take the opportunity to introduce sharding wide-scale as a permanent feature
 I honestly have seen no indication of that from them. In fact, everything I’ve seen from Blizzard would indicate they understand sharding as a whole is a negative experience.

I’m not concerned about sharding in the context Blizzard has taken it into regard. Launch is a real technical problem. Another real problem is the list I mentioned above: Blizzard (nobody, in fact) has ANY idea how popular Classic will be at launch nor how popular it will be 3/6/9 months in. Blizzard needs to have a plan that covers all contingencies while still maintaining robust populations for these realms long-term. You care very much about the launch of this game - I guarantee 6 months into Classic you will care much less about launch and more about the current state of the realm.

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I am really concerned about sharding reaching up into the higher level zones. zones above 20 should not shard. berrans is its own problem because it is a level 12-30 zone

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The higher you go, the more the population disperses throughout the world and you simply don’t have the problem you see at launch (where 100% of the realm is in half a dozen or so zones).

They disperse higher not only because the zone choices branch out but also because the population progresses at a different pace.

I agree Barrens is certainly a congested zone for Horde but the only other zone like that would be STV. Everything else is pretty low-key.

Another thing I would question is whether or not the sharding process would also segregate players from zone chat. If I can still participate with 100% of the population in barrens chat for example, or do “/who Barrens 1-60” and see everyone on the realm who is there, then the actual impact of sharding is not that high.

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I played the demo. the sharding with the demo seemed to have everyone on the same chat channel. I agree the higher levels should not need sharding, but I also thing the resorces in the higher zones should not get duplicated do to sharding.

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Duskwood should never shard.

Sharding should be switched off within a couple of weeks, if not after the first weekend.

For someone who doesn’t want sharding, you’re one of the most liberal interpretations of what is ‘minimal sharding’.

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Or you know they could do the slightly more intensive but far more acceptable option
 Server merges.

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Acceptable to whom? If your server requires a merge then it has not been a healthy realm. Nobody decides what server to roll on based on which one will be the best candidate for merging after 6 months.

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NO SHARDING

Period. Sharding is a system that has no place in Classic.

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Most of the people who are against sharding seem to be far more ok with merges

That aside it’s only logical that merges will eventually be needed anyway. Sharding only helps short-mid term retention as it only helps in the crowded rush and the knock on effect it has long term won’t be very large. Eventually the server will dry up as people leave. This is doubly so after the final phase has played out. To keep enough players to play with on those servers the only option would be to server merge. Why force the community to deal with something they are vehemently against when it won’t let you avoid the merges in the long run? Just use the merges that you will eventually have to deal with to keep healthy servers anyway.

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Honestly, I cannot read the word ‘sharding’ without imagining skidmarks in meundies. Both leave me with the same unpleasant expression as well.

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OP, blizz already said that even if they did use sharding, it would only be in starting zones and only for a short time at launch.

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I generally disregard the community’s opinion on the matter as it’s mostly based off fear and assumptions of what “sharding” would actually do for Classic. Seldom do I see anyone discuss the matter within the context of the service that Blizzard will actually have to provide to its players.

As for merging in 6 months vs 12months+
 If I had the choice, I would elect to put it off for as long as possible. If the trade-off is sharding in the first 2 weeks in the starter zones; why would I give a ****? Why is that small window so significant to players in the grand scope of all of Vanilla WoW?

I have yet to see any proof that it would be so colossally detrimental to the game (short or long term)

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The launch will only happen once, and is an opportunity for large numbers of people to interact to generate unique experiences. The launch should be a crowded spectacle that people remember.

Sharding too heavily for simple efficiency is a lost gaming opportunity. If used at all sharding should be restricted to the initial starter zones for a very brief window IMO.

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Wow
 This is actually a very well thought out pro sharding post that brings up a great reason to have sharding. Congrats. Most pro shard posts don’t say anything more intelligent than “muh spawnz.” Good on you, you’ve actually got me thinking there might be a benefit to sharding if it’s done right.

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The other side of that coin is just as true. All I see is “NO SHARDING BECAUSE SHARDING IS BAD”. I’d like to see real concerns. What specifically would be detrimental due to sharding and is it possible to implement sharding in a way that mitigates the negative impact? There’s very little dialogue on the matter which doesn’t seem to help Blizzard at all.

Sharding not being a part of Vanilla is a fair point, but it completely ignores what actually DID happen in vanilla: Massive queues and world server crashes. That’s not an option either if you’re Blizzard. So what’s the middle ground? It’s not a yes/no issue, it’s a ‘here are the technical issues, what can be done to mitigate them?’

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Sharding turns servers into a ghost town. Take Retail for example, I didn’t see another player outside of cities (friendly or otherwise) until 112 while leveling this character. I’d /who and there would be other people in the zone I was in, but I never saw them.

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Sure. But retail isn’t Classic. Classic is a fresh new server where the population is tightly concentrated. So the only way sharding turns Classic into a ghost town (again, we’re talking about a time frame around the launch of Classic) is if The servers are sharding players into something small like 50 players per zone. Do we know how small/large the shards will be? Is it possible a ‘shard’ of Durotar might still hold 250 players for example?

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Two points on this:

a) Except for the odd troll, no-one wants permanent sharding. This post is actually far more liberal than the average pro-launch sharding person. Not using sharding in the Classic launch will create ghost town servers, not because everyone’s hidden, but because only 10% of the original 8,000 people allowed to roll on the server actually got past L10.

b) I’ve recently started re-levelling in Retail with my partner who’s never played WoW. (Doing retail to ease her in, PS’s are not legal and would be a shock to the system.) And levelling in the Northern Barrens we literally had congestion. Players waiting for a ganked questgiver to return, almost 40 odd people. Widget drops that we had dozens of people circling the southern Pools looking for, and competing to get to. My retail levelling experience at least at that low level has been far more populated than it was in late Vanilla or mid to late BC even.

So while I accepted the ‘common wisdom’ that servers become ghost towns, I’ve seen that done right, they can remain populated and vibrant. I just don’t think Blizzard is “doing it right” a lot of the time.

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