I keep seeing a lot of worries I feel are extremely unfounded knee-jerk reactions
Wow back in the day could handle 100 players in the same zone, if you don’t think infrastructure that is configured to do so can handle many more players than that I’m not sure what to tell you. The current game had issues with the 120 players raiding a city not because the infrastructure couldn’t handle it but because the infrastructure wasn’t designed to handle it. Because it’s a cloud server it can likely be configured to support an entire servers worth of players in the same area.
Sharding for Classic is purely to spread out a massive influx of players densely populated in a few select areas all far far beyond what the game was designed for with them all fighting over the same resources. This sort of need for a solution is a unique, one time occurance.
The player density problem from a design/gameplay perspective is a single, one time issue that will never occur again, there’s no logical reason sharding will be needed for this for the rest of Classic’s lifetime so the worry over this is a little strange to me.
The ability for their server infrastructure to support a servers worth of densely packed players is unknown, but I’m 100% certain it can at least support what Vanilla mostly did (SS vs TM, City Raids, world bosses), so using sharding for these scenarios should also not be a concern (but they are and frequently for some reason).
The only incident that really killed Vanilla servers was the opening of the AQ Gates. I have no idea if today’s infrastructure could be configured to support an event like that, I suspect after reading the article linked earlier regarding Patrick Dawson that is easily can though so this would be the only other possible scenario in Vanilla that would even warrant a conversation or worry over sharding coming back beyond the launch of Classic.
Except it won’t be a “one time issue”. There’s no way the AQ gate opening doesn’t present at least as much of a population density issue as release starting zones.
The problem with the AQ gate opening was my first point (Server ability), the problem with launch is my second point (Gameplay/design).
Yes they are two problems caused by density but they are two entirely different problems. The problem with the AQ gate opening Will likely not even exist in Classic, even more so since the infrastructure is cloud based. Gate openings are staggered by realm so you aren’t going to have all realms opening at the same time which would allow the cloud based infrastructure to be used to support each server when it’s AQ gate opening occurs.
Well we’ll worry about that when the time comes, if the AQ events end up in a situation where the choice is sharding or people simply not getting to experience it(like happened in vanilla) due to server issues then sharding is fine.
Either way that’s a different problem the zones at launch never being designed for massive amounts of players.
I prefer no sharding in the starting zones. I wish they would have a lower population cap on servers, and then slowly increase cap as people progress through the starting zones.
I do understand why sharding can help at launch to allow a higher server population cap . After a few weeks of the launch I am sure plenty will quit and blizzard can convert back to “normal” server population caps.
That being said, I think sharding is one of the main reasons why the social aspect of the game is dying. I started playing during wotlk and enjoyed how every server had an identity, and you could see everyone outside of org dueling on your server. With sharding and crz servers have no meaning anymore except for the auction house and mythic raiders.
If blizzard continues to shard outside of the starting zones I would be very disappointed and would probably only play retail. My friends and I want to play classic for its social aspect and server identity. Sharding would definitely kill one of the main reasons that attracts me to try classic wow…
You only took a part of my sentence and you took it out of context
I didn’t say the AQ gate opening would probably not exist, I said the problem with the AQ gate opening probably won’t exist implying they won’t have a need or reason to use sharding for the AQ gate opening
I remember the AQ gates opening on my server. I was logged out a few times trying to take the boat to that continent, but once I got there it was fine. It was super fun, a bit laggy, but otherwise no more DC’s.
Not sure if you were on a lower pop server or what but I also remember the AQ gates opening on my server and it was a shootshow. I’d be lucky if I was able to stay logged in for more than a few minutes, while I was logged in I was getting 2-5 FPS and when I wasn’t I was in a long bum server queue. The AQ event was a total shootshow on my server in Vanilla. Thanksfully from the sounds of those articles from the lead tech guy that won’t be an issue this time around with Classic!
This is what WoW was meant to be about, but somehow Blizzard has forgotten this over the years and i fear they might try the same crap all over again. Sharding and CRZ are pretty hated from what i can tell and yet they still force this crap on live.
I stopped playing retail because of sharding / crz and i will not touch classic if it has sharding in it. Blizzard cannot be trusted to do the right thing, they have no pride or a sense of community in them since if they did these systems would simply not exist in their current state, and in current WoW.
People keep saying this… Who are these “tourists” that are going to abandon a game before trying it for more than a few hours? Retail players never get bored and reroll an alt for a week? That is the level of commitment it will take to push through into the high teens-low 20s. Ballpark 12-15 hours /played. Are retail players really going to hate it that much? That they give up before getting decent spells or a single green item?
If blizzard shards at launch I really don’t think it’s going to work to just shard the starting zone.
This is the concern held by most of those opposed to sharding–that it will NOT be used “only in the starting areas and only for a brief time at launch”.
As I have noted in other threads, there are pro-sharding advocates that have already gone from “only in the starting areas and only for a couple of days at launch” to “sharding the 1-20 areas is acceptable” or “only for the first few weeks” and even at least one that advocates sharding for the first few months.
Folks need to relax. People should be more worried about sharting than sharding. All signals from blizzard is that sharding will be verboten in classic with the possible exception of the population spike expected during the first few days of launch.
Verboten seems a bit strong. I’d have to go look up the quote but wasn’t blizzards statement that they are considering it for a “limited time” in starting areas? That’s vague enough to mean essentially anything they need it to: the first twelve hours in Northshire Abbey only, and the first sixth months in anything under level 35 both could be covered by that statement
Blizzard also told us that CRZ’s would only be used in past expansion content and would be verboten in current content. How did that turn out?
Maybe i am wrong, but I believe that Blizzard also told us that level scaling would only apply to legion and beyond content and NOT to WoD and prior content. How did that turn out? They even expanded level scaling to include ilvl scaling, so that the better geared you are, the stronger the mobs get.
That is the problem. Blizzard cannot seem to abide by the limits that they tell us they themselves set. They seem to want to push their newest toys into the entire game, no matter the damage that doing so does to the game.
Yep it won’t be a one time occurrence and I never seen any information stating that its only starting zones.
It would be sad to get to stv on pvp realm only to not see any enemy players in it, when there are some currently in it.
Role play PvP realms both would be impacted more then pve, but not knowing people kinda sucks if sharding was removed.