FUN FACT.
Shadowlands launched on November 23rd, 2020. Sharding was turned on at that time, as is the norm for expansions when everyone is funneled through one city/area.
Sharding was turned off by December 7th. Two weeks later. We are now three weeks after launch! People are starting to hit max level and return to the cities to pick up their storylines and interactions where they left off and are running into largely empty cities. Our addons tell us how many other people are actually around, we can see exactly what we’re missing.
Dragonflight has so many nods to roleplay, from the city of Valdrakken having tons of seating, tables, rooms, inns, etc. to toys to transmog…it’s a shame that you’re looking at driving away your evergreen subscribers who stay steadily subbed through content lulls and after raid tiers, year after year, demanding close to nothing in expensive new content so that we can be left alone to putter around in Stormwind and Orgrimmar and do our weird combination of acting and writing for fun.
Did I mention that we also spend a ton of real cash on tokens, and shop-bought mounts, toys, pets and transmog?
Our hobby, in the form that most of us do where you can walk up to anyone at a main hub and start interacting, is only accessible with the removal of sharding.
I realize that there’s a ton of stuff that is just plain flat broken right now. I’m sure there’s internal triage and making it so that my Draenei and her husband can sit on the overlook and watch people and comment about passers-by as they plan out the next raid on an evil cult that they need to do is probably low on the list of to-dos, but on the whole, Roleplayers kind of get tired of being at the bottom of the priority list considering how much we invest in the game. Logging in every day, staying logged in all the time, bumping those #engagement metrics, posting about the game on our social media accounts, giving you all kinds of money that the baseline casual doesn’t on a consistent basis.
I’m sure our special no-sharding-or-phasing-in-legacy-content-and-major-cities ruleset is a pain, and requires manual workarounds. But it’s one of the only things that we really need to be content with making our own fun.
If this spiel sounds rehearsed, it’s because we have to drag it out every…SINGLE…TIME…sharding gets blipped back on, for a prepatch or a new expansion launch. We’d LOVE to not have to get mad and make a fuss, but somehow we always do until someone nudges the Server Gremlins. It always ends up leaving a bad will behind, when all the new content in Dragonflight could’ve made it an easy win for you guys.
Poke the Server Gremlin and remind him that he needs to flip the switch!
