Suggestion, Instead of sharding the beta why don’t we try not sharding it and see the player response.
Other ideas may want to be test without first settling for a change without cause.
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Unfortunately, I’m pretty certain they are going to use sharding. I also unfortunately don’t believe it will only be for launch and the starter zones. As others have said, they will probably use it anytime there are too many players in an area. I really hope I’m wrong, but judging by Blizzard’s past, I won’t believe it until I see it.
At this point I don’t even plan on playing until it’s removed. Sharding was one of the major dealbreakers for me.
What I wish they would do is have a few servers without sharding to allow those of us who know full well what a crowded area and server is like, play on them. I would take the competition for quests, mobs, grouping up, queues and server crashes any day of the week over one minute of sharding. Then let them shard the rest who don’t want to be bothered by too many people play on their sharded realms.
So just give us some unsharded realms please.
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At this point I don’t even plan on playing until it’s removed.
I don’t know if I can ever get that taste out my mouth if they put it in from the start.
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Understand that completely.
That’s why I don’t plan on playing until I know it has been completely removed. If I started playing at the beginning with sharding enabled, it would turn me off so much I probably wouldn’t go back. My main concern is they won’t stick to their word. Anyone who wants to be fair and plays live, knows Blizzard goes back on their word way too often.
I’m sure some people will laugh and say how ridiculous that is. Well, think of it this way. I’m sure there is at least one thing in a game that totally would ruin it for all of you. Sharding is that thing for me. I honestly loathe it. So much so that I rarely play live anymore in big part because of it. I recently made a character on a RP realm just to get away from it as much as possible.
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What is it that you detest about sharding? Personally, I enjoy the less crowded areas. It just makes the world feel more…real. To me. Just my perspective. Not that removing it will keep me from playing Classic. I just like the emptiness. Areas like Barrens, Desolace, Thousand Needles…the empiness just “fits”. imo
I can’t speak for everyone but for me some of the best memories from Vanilla were HUGE amounts of people all in one area, AQ gates opening, raids on the opposite faction’s leaders. These are what will suffer if sharding is allowed outside the starting zone.
Has Blizzard specified the reason for the sharding? is it too many people in one place makes it hard to play or is it too many people on one server will crash servers?
If its the previous then I could buy them only doing it in the starting zones but if its due to server stability than for sure they would use it whenever anything more than a small crowd was in one place.
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I’m not here to play a singleplayer game.
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Without sharding the cities, where a lot of people will spend a lot of time, will feel alive and almost breathing. You’ll witness the full might of the Horde attack puny Stormwind WITH Lord Kazzak behind them! Absolute chaos and lots of fun.
A real economy and barter system unique to that server.
Friends, enemies and feeling like you’re actually part of something grand.
It really is a whole different experience.
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I like seeing the legitimate group of people that is around me, even if that means it’s overcrowded on occasion. I can’t stand seeing people appear and disappear in front of my eyes, or mobs or nodes. It completely ruins the immersion for me.
I like seeing a certain player and then 10-15 minutes later I might see them again. With sharding, that chance lessens quite a bit. Once an area gets too full, people get sharded.
I will give you an example of what happened to me in live. I had started a new blood elf mage. Once I got to Eversong Woods, the area was packed. When I attempted to do some quests I knew it would be a bit tough with so many people. I thought, no problem, I will invite some people around me. But I couldn’t because people kept appearing and disappearing in front of me. People kept getting sharded. What really got under my skin was when I went to do the quest where you kill the dwarf at the spire. There literally wasn’t another person in sight at this time. I start following the dwarf up the ramp. (You can’t attack him until you reach the top). Right when we got almost to the top, three other players magically appeared beside me. I barely got one hit in to get credit for the kill.
As much as that frustrated me, I continued on. I got the quest to kill scourge in the Dead Scar. People were phasing in and out around me. They kept getting sharded. There were not any mobs to kill, so I waited and waited for one to spawn. Finally I saw one spawn so I started running to get into range to attack it. But guess what happened? As I got into range I got sharded. The mob disappeared and at that point I was done. It was the first time I logged out in pure frustration in the game.
It ruins community for me. I made friends early on back in Vanilla in those starting zones due to grouping up with other players to do certain quests instead of everyone competing. This was pretty common place on my realm back then. People would even call out in chat that they were going to kill a named and asked others if they wanted to come along. People worked together, cooperated and helped each other out.
Then you have the issue as to what sharding does to community events and PvP realms. Many times in live I saw people complaining because someone was getting ganked, called out for help, but when the players came to help they could not see the person because they were in a different shard. It completely breaks immersion and community in my opinion.
I could go on and on, but I think this is already too long. ![:stuck_out_tongue:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/stuck_out_tongue.png?v=6" ":stuck_out_tongue:")
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^^^this^^^
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No need, that was perfect.
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Very well stated. Thank you for that.
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Sharding is going to be included. That is my opinion, of course, and some people’s heads will explode reading it…,.but if you read what they have said and can put things together it isn’t hard to conclude it will be included on release. And that is a GREAT thing.
Thank you as well for the constructive conversation. Even though we seem to be a bit on different sides on the subject, I do respect others views and really respect when a constructive conversation can take place.
That’s quite rare here lol.
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If it was possible for Blizzard to put an infinite number of players in the same location without sharding. They would.
There is a breaking point. Blizzard has had many years to learn what it takes to push that break. Blizzard isn’t going to allow it.
Not sure why people advocate for high populations that knowingly will cause performance to drop below playability standards.
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Sharding will single handedly destroy classic if it’s used outside of the starting zones. They’ll keep the retail players but the vets will leave in droves.
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