It’d be possible to do something like this, but it would more be a matter of if Blizzard thinks that it’s worthwhile to do or not.
Part of what we’re facing is that sharding is a solution they have with very little effort or time needed to implement.
With sharding all they need is an exit strategy to get rid of it, since they’ve said it would be time limited.
That’s if they even end up needing it in the first place.
Can we really talk anny more about this without Blizz giving some more insight?
o_O thats what i mean, new stormrage servers being generated by the same tech, just semi-permanent. it’s a form of a queue but you’re playing the game in the meantime and will end up on stormrage just the same.
Wouldn’t that also create a lot of unnecessary clutter on the realm list?
you think its unnecessary when so many people are against sharding including all of the streamers and many of the private server people? not to mention how confusing it would be to actual new players. .
They need a solution, which that is technically one.
It’s just, like I said, sharding is also a solution, and one that is much cheaper and quicker to implement than having Stormrage-1, Stormrage-2, etc. with a shared character database(so no naming conflicts) and then merging them after a few weeks in a sort of “permanent sharding” technique that Hyperspace is getting at.
The benefit Blizzard has with sharding as a solution is that it’s extremely easy for them to use, because their server already uses it. All they need is a method to turn it off after the few weeks have passed.
Yes. Think about it this way. Do YOU want to end up scrolling past entire pages dominated by one realm just to find the one you want?
make it a menu. stormrage is in list. but if its full, and you click it, it generates a dropdown with its numbered shards. i build websites so this kinda problem is an easy fix
They’d have to make changes to the UI to allow that. This would create a situation where those temporary shards are permanent just to satisfy the changed UI’s existence. I doubt Blizz wants to release patches for Classic, hence why the content is intended to be released in stages rather than patches.
it takes all of 10 minutes to code a drop down menu and add it to a ui like that. cause all its doing is pointing at the server address. its not making any other calculations
Sure, but I still doubt that is even something they’d consider for more than a second. Classic isn’t supposed to be a high-maintenance project. Creating more patches for it than is needed to keep it running alongside the main game makes it high-maintenance.
its not high maintenance. there are drop down menus all over the internet, this forum, the game itself is full of them. its not difficult. its not even difficult to remove and have it populate the changes on the fly in real time.
You’d still need to patch the game client. I’m reasonably certain that’s off the table unless absolutely necessary.
let me explain. when the area becomes too populated, the tech is already in place to create a shard. so just code it so that shard it creates is semi permanent and make new players to that server select that shard if they want to play on that server. since the tech is there, it can also sense when the shard is no longer needed and it auto merges the players back together.
You need to patch the client to support the drop-down menu. And then you’d need to patch that drop-down menu OUT of the client once it is no longer needed.
That’s how many patches in the course of a short period of time? This isn’t something that can be done via hotfix.
its one patch if the code is run with a real time update. like the shard is a real time update.
Patching the game client is not a big undertaking for Blizzard given that the game is PC exclusive.
It’s not like a console game where you need to take potentially months to go through Sony/Microsoft certification.
Also the client wouldn’t need a patch to support the menu, as it would simply ship with it.
We’re going to download an entirely new client for Classic. We will not be using the 8.x series BfA one.
Yeah, it’s a modified 7.3.5 client. I know.
I still maintain you’d need to patch the client to interface with that drop-down menu code, and then patch it AGAIN once that code is no longer needed to get rid of the empty drop-down menus on the realm list. That’s a LOT of superfluous patching that can be avoided with regular sharding.
Why would you not launch with the dropdown enabled?
It’s one patch to disable it after you don’t need it, and technically you could even avoid that by coding the client so that it only shows a dropdown for servers that are split.
Plus that’d leave the feature in the client in case you wanted to release a new server in the future with the same setup.