They’re probably using cloud services for a few things in Battlenet, but I’ve looked before and I can’t actually find an official statement from Blizzard that WoW at least is using cloud servers. People say it’s been hinted at, but I can’t find the actual confirmation from Blizzard.
The thing to understand about cloud computing, is that the term cloud is a bit of a buzz word popularized by Amazon in the mid 2000s.
The idea of networking computers together to share resources has been around for decades, though. Since the 70s, when we were running things that would be the predecessors to the internet.
This is great idea that I proposed before. One downside is that people will have the same character names or guild names on for example Stormrage1, 2 & 3. So when the merge starts for example Stormrage2 and Stormrage3 merging into Stormrage1 the people who have the same names like Stormrage1 will get a prompt for a rename. Unless they somehow have the technology to chain and connect the realms together so that for example whoever makes Jaina on Stormrage1 can’t make it on the other 2 it would work.
But people argued that this is just a worse version of sharding since it does the same thing as sharding but in a more complicated way. I don’t know if I agree or not.
So really… what would your solution be, then? I mean, to me it’s clear sharding’s the lesser of any possible evils here. The greatest evil would be to do nothing about the population problem… because unfortunately it IS a problem, and will be at least twice during Classic’s run unless it turns out very very few people are actually playing.
Its simple. Use it at launch and never again. The classic community by and large doesn’t want sharding.
Sharding AQ would be horrible for the experience.
Nostalrius had a huge queue times but nobody complained and it was the real experience. No sharding. If they came out with a promise not to use it pass the 1-10 zones I can understand the use of sharding, but they haven’t promised anything like that and I am pretty damn sure they will use it again for events such as AQ.
I’m not a fan of sharding, but I accept that stability aside it IS a mitigating factor in the potential population problems as the tourists begin to leave and server populations take a significant drop.
and I have yet to hear of another solution that would work. Plus, it’s a solution Blizzard has on hand. The servers can already shard, so very little is needed to set that up.
When it comes to server stability, part of making Classic is going to include making sure the servers don’t up and s*** the bed just because 100+ people are all in one area.
AQ is a bit of a special event. I’m not even sure how Blizzard feels about that at the moment when even when talking about sharding they were very quick to point out that it would be a time limited thing at launch.
Though it might just be something to let happen. Yeah it might be a bit laggy for people(anybody running the game on a toaster is already going to have problems anyway), but at the same time that IS pretty authentic to how the original AQ opening went.
Honestly the best solution would be to steal the cryptic does it for star trek online and neverwinter. multiple copies of zones with the ability to travel between them. Chat is shared across all copies and theres a cooldown between switching copies so you cant just abuse it to farm nodes and you cant do it in combat so no cheating that way.
That said, I’m fine with how blizz has stated they will use sharding (launch only).
When you say “using it at launch” do you mean specifically the starter zones? 'Cuz I am sure they would use it pass the 1-10 as well. And to anyone who hasn’t played Vanilla in a while, let me tell you that the launch of a server is the most epic thing about the whole ordeal. When everyone is fresh and you make those friends at the start. The actual leveling experience for a lot of people is what makes the game great. Sharding absolutely destroys that.
Missing an important milestone in the game’s history is just an “inconvenience” to you?
Hell I don’t even like AQ or the Lovecraft crap that Blizz put in it and I wouldn’t miss the Gates for the world because of the historical significance. If I was kicked off the server during that event and put in a qeue I’d be hella P.O.'d.