How to use SHARDING the Right Way

Definitely not today, no. Don’t think of a server as a single piece of hardware that crashes with too many connections. Those are dead.

Servers are grid/mesh based systems which is why you won’t get crazy load spikes and which is why you can bring new realms online with a few clicks. Think of the entire grid as a HDD. You’re not limited to 1 folder per drive. You can create as many as the storage medium fits. Realms are spread across the grid in each designated time zone with some compartmentalization for safety. You can have (random number) 20 Realms on a single grid. One realm being at max capacity is no different than that exact same number of players spread across all 20 Realms.

The only worry about overpopulation in zones in 2019 is spawns, crowding, client performance due to the number of vertices (meshes) in the game cameras viewport (more meshes needs more CPU/GPU), etc.

You won’t be able to crash a “server” with level 1 Gnome Warriors marching to IF anymore.

Yes, the correct use of sharting is to not use it.

If you’re not seeing people in a zone while levelling in retail, more often than not it’s because of phasing. The old world has been given some pretty heavy phasing all throughout. I could complete a questline not seeing but a few people prior, then all of a sudden i complete the questline that was tied to the phase and i’d be in the updated phased content and see more players.

Here is my proposal for Sharding to “do it right”… dont do it at all.

The END

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Sharding the launch experience is the smartest, best way to handle the initial rush. There will be enough people playing at launch that the servers will still feel lively.

On top of that, zone chat is not sharded, so there will still be easy ways to group with people, and grouped people will always be able to see eachother (outside of phasing which won’t exist in Classic.)

Didn’t blizzard say that sharding will only happen for a few weeks after launch, and it will only affect starting zones (and maybe zones like Westfall, the barrens etc).

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They didn’t give a lot of details but they did make statements that could easily be interpreted as being limited like that. They didn’t even state they’d use it, just that it was on the table.

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Sharding only happens when there is a large amount of players within the zone.

If only two people who were on the same realm were in the same zone, they won’t be sharded from each other.

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Judging by the way some people are acting, it is like they believe that sharding will be up 24/7 for all of classic.

I can see blizzard doing it for a few weeks, maybe 2-3 to prevent server queue times, then once people start to spread out, turn it off.

It is funny how people would rather sit afk in a queue for hours instead of playing the game because of #nochanges!!!

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If you read some of the older posts from some people, they also think sharding is the same thing as CRZ and phasing.

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See my eatlier post. Watch the Q & A video and listen to what Ion is actually saying and pay particular attention to the specific words he chose.

Blizzard did not say that “sharding will only happen a few weeks after launch” or that sharding would only affect the “starting zones”.

At best, they sort of vaguely made a statement that could be interpreted as implying they might limit sharding.

They have not even given any definitive limits, either geographical limits or time limits, for sharding, if sharding is used.

Easy the right way would be to not use it at all.

I hate this sh*t. Always p-servers that don’t shard sooooo