How so? Its very easy to say “No u” but that isn’t exactly a discussion.
I absolutely loved Vanilla.
It was an incredible game!!! Enormously better in every way than the MMO I played for 2 years prior to Vanilla (Horizons: Empire of Istaria).
Vanilla’s gameplay was polished, the world was fun to explore with every zone unique, classes all felt different from each other, the framerate and graphics looked great.
Bottom line: Vanilla was an absolutely superior game and the best mmo available.
… but that was nearly 15 years ago.
Since then things have moved on.
- Vanilla’s incredible graphics are completely outdated by today’s standards.
- The sense of wonder and exploration is gone. I already know all the zones so there is no longer any sense of mystery.
- Vanilla had a lot of broken gameplay elements that weren’t visible at first, but became noticeable with experience. I would be aware of these things right from the start in Classic.
and so on.
Regarding Vanilla’s launch? … unfortunately I missed it. I didn’t start playing Vanilla until 2 months after launch day. As such I never experienced overcrowded starting zones in Vanilla. But I did experience overcrowded Silithus when that quest hub opened, and overcrowded starting zones in multiple expansions.
Not to derail your valid but superfluous statements, but the reason why most of us are here, is that “moving on” moved in a direction that we didn’t enjoy and we want to return to a point where it hasn’t “moved on”.
- Graphics do not make an engaging game. They make an FPS. Pacman, Zelda, Mario Bros, even Pong are still engaging games today. Original Modern Warfare, pretty sure almost no-one even dusts it off.
- Not everyone played Vanilla, and for those of us who did, it was 15 years ago. If nothing else, rediscovering all those things we’ve forgotten will create a new wave of enjoyment and suprise.
- You might be aware of the broken elements, and fixate on them, but many of us will enjoy the game despite the broken elements. Just like we enjoyed the game despite the broken elements back then. We knew itemisation was all messed up back then, and we did the best with what we got. We didn’t like DHKs, but we worked around it because we still wanted to play.
I was at Vanilla’s launch. It was atrocious because Blizzard was still learning. And this time, with a bit of sharding, it will be far smoother because they learnt. Launch capacity and server stability are not something they’re trying to replicate. They’re not going to intentionally disable the servers for 5 days just to simulate March 2005. But Silithus? That overcrowding was manageable, unlike Classic launch will be.
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I like this idea.
I agree with this, it pretty much describes most pro sharders.
Wasn’t there supposedly 2-3 million active players at the start of bfa.
Despite selling a lot of expansions, the people who bought the expansions only wanted the new races.
I am all for giving people choices, let some people have no sharding in starter zones on some servers while giving those who do a big server.
Having sharding won’t prevent a server from becoming a dead one, it might even cause more imbalance to it.
As long as I get my medium servers, because high servers kinda suck.
This seems pretty much true.
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Claiming that “community is the very foundation of Vanilla” is not pessimistic. It was part and parcel to the authentic Vanilla experience.
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BTW use the backtick ` around links to make them copyable but not clickable.
https://www.reddit.com/r/classicwow/comments/b74lst/to_the_tenacious_nochanges_posters_thank_you/ejpvewf/
- Perma-shard server merges are basically just server merges. Without having the communities interact until the merge, they’re no different to normal server merges, except that there’s a looming axe hanging above them the entire time of “You may be merged! Beware!”, and there’s no issue with name smashes when they merge. It will still destroy communities because you’re smashing two (or more) hierarchies of players together and expecting them to sort it out without drama. There’s always drama. The bit at the end is a little less crazy, where you say that it gets merged guaranteed, and not long after launch, before communities have really formed, but that’s no guarantee that it won’t create one massively full server either.
- Dynamic Respawns are a bad idea too, especially throughout the game, because while destroying the economy, at level 1-10 you sit for more time than you play, drinking or eating. Without consumate changes in mana regen or pool, low level players will be ganked constantly by the respawn of the mob they just killed. Don’t even think about trying to go get that Burning Blade Medallion.
- Long queues. While technically this one is the most authentic, Vanilla never saw 20,000 player queues on a server with a pop cap of 2-3k. With the limited number of servers, they’re going to see that on most servers and that’s unacceptable to Blizzard, so they are going to do something.
This actually doesn’t follow. For two reasons:
- In higher areas there won’t be the population. With a post launch pop cap of 2k, any given zone should be able to handle the population on the modern game, and you’ll never have more than a quarter of the server in any given zone except for special occasions like AQ. And AQ is pointless sharded, because then you can’t see the thing that you came to see (the gong banging) and they know it.
- Blizzard have said they don’t want to use sharding beyond launch, and they know we don’t want it either. They’re only choosing to do it in the starters because the first week or so of Classic is going to be crazy. No other period will have the same need, because if they see too many people continuing past 20, they can add new servers during launch (takes about 30 minutes) and spread new incoming players onto those.
20 proved across the life of WoW to be a real barrier. Players getting past 20 tended to keep playing for a longer period, whereas the majority of burnouts burned out before 20. If they see more than about 10% passing that limit, they know they have to add more servers, because sharding won’t work to contain it and they’ll have constant queues past launch.
Since you want to quote a lot:
This is the definitive answer on at least their current thinking on Sharding.
- Limited
- Time Limited
- Ensuring a healthy population and single world after launch.
This is basically a question of “Do you trust Blizzard?” If your answer is no, then it doesn’t matter what you want, they’ll do what they want. If your answer is yes, then they’ve told you exactly what they want to do and sharding beyond starters is not it.
Blizzard has made two contradictory statements and need to be accountable to delivering what we have asked for and what they have promised: the authentic Vanilla experience.
Statement:
Sharding is antithetical to Vanilla WoW
Statement:
Sharding will be used in the first few weeks.
Both can’t be true.
What is true, however, is sharding was NEVER part of the authentic gameplay of Vanilla.
IMHO, going to all the effort to restore, for example, the exact Vanilla light from a lamp post in Classic (actually part of the awesome Blizzcon presentation), the Vanilla debuff limit or limit Loot Trading is all meaningless if the very community that is the foundation of this game is divided and dimished - all for the convenience (mainly for tourists) during a launch.
I am really worried of losing the community to conveniences, like sharding, all over again. It’s like an alcoholic promising never to drink again but then just have a little drink for a few weeks.
I manage cloud-based infrastrucures for a living. Once you have a platform in place that is stable and scalable (which is what they have in sharding) it is costly and difficult to replace it with anything else. (Individual server blades are long gone. Servers have been replaced with the cloud provider (e.g., AWS, Azure, Google Cloud). AWS, for example, provides all the services, auto-scaling containers and networking now. In other words, “cloud computing” IS the server essentially. “Creating another server” is a complex process now that relies on a plethora of micro-services. This would be my guess why they want to use sharding - it’s the default infrastructure now.
The problem with Blizzard’s modern cloud computing is that micro-serviced based architecture has a terrible human and gameplay side-effect.
Splitting up traditional servers into hundreds of micro-services that run in the cloud ends up splitting up players (human beings who need community) into tiny little shards of their own - effectively isolating and diminishing the Vanilla WoW gameplay and community that the game was built upon.
The effect is similar to playing Dungeons and Dragons with a group of friends. But instead of everyone sitting around a table together with a DM, each person is in their own room with their own table over a video conference or something like that lol.
Once sharding works to solve high populations and load-blancing, it will be used (for cost-effectiveness, at least) everywhere there are high populations (e.g., cities and any zone with n+ number of players.)
Blizzard has NEVER once said “sharding will be removed when…”.
Think about that.
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“We know that sharding is antithetical to Vanilla WoW, but may be required for the first few weeks”.
Those positions can both be true.
If you really manage cloud-based infrastructures, you know how easy it is to run up new clean servers. That’s their other already existing infrastructure method.
If they see that sharding the starters isn’t enough, because too many people are getting past the starting zones, they will add more servers for later starters, so that they can spread the eventual load over more servers. What they don’t want to do is add new servers if they’re not needed and leave the population spread out.
Uh, they specifically said they wouldn’t use it in higher level zones, like “There must be only one Kazzak”.
I hope so and I trust them on that statement since they were unambiguous about that.
However, they have never stated “sharding will be removed when…”
The implementation of sharding’s location and timeframe is unambiguously ambiguous. 
That’s what worries me.
Kazzak or AQ may not be sharded. But by that time, cities, EPL or STV might be sharded if the populations are high enough to inconvenience n-number of players with unacceptable login queues or mob respawn rates, it seems to me at least.
I wish that Blizzard would just come out and say something like "Sharding will be turned off at Level 11."
If they said that, it would probably put to bed the entire sharding debate and I could get back to work and not stress out about my community being sacrificed to convenience like it was in modern WoW.
Agreed.
I am quite looking forward to Classic myself. If it can help me recall even a fraction of the magic I felt when I first picked up WoW it will be well worth the experience.
Classic is a rework of a very old version of the game. However, things have changed so much in Retail since, Classic should feel far different. Much more so than going to the next Retail expansion.
I expect this “freshness” should make for an engaging and fun experience.
I also expect that Blizzard will do their best to make sure Classic does not experience the teething issues Vanilla had. I expect a fun leveling experience that’s not too crowded. I also expect no server crashes or loot lag and minimal downtime… just like in Retail.
However, in the long run - after playing for a couple years and with the freshness worn off, do I expect Classic will feel like a better game than Retail? … I expect not.
-Quick copy paste as the topic hasn’t changed. No need to type anything new-
This project is called Classic, not Vanilla. Blizzards modern tech/solutions will be used to assist with and even help justify the business’ needs concerning the Classic project. Sharding, right click report, modern bot/exploit detection etc… Asking them not to use their modern tech/solutions is asinine, imo.
Server queues weren’t an intended part of the game. (I can’t believe the OP likens the queues to Vanilla content that needs to be reproduced for authenticity…) and most consider them a nuisance.
They aren’t shooting for the 10k private server experience. Especially on launch and especially in starter zones.
They stated on the day Classic was announced they aren’t looking to re-create the launch experience. So we immediately knew a modern solution to address launch based server bloat would be utilized.
I understand the chicken little-esque prophesies of doom but I don’t agree with them. At all.
Starter zone sharding will not affect the overall Classic experience in any way.
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Well said Espressobean.
Classic and Vanilla aren’t the same thing.
The goal of Classic is to recreate the fun gameplay and look of Vanilla. Not the unintended nuisances of Vanilla like server downtown, queues and spam.
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The implication that they understand how destructive Sharding can be makes it clear they have no intention of using it beyond launch. They said it would be time limited to launch.
Trust, and relax.
Totally agree.
And if you stopped bringing up your Silithus PTSD, we’d be on the same page.
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Or that like reasonable prognosticators, they see that 90% of their launch players will quit before L20 and 2000 is only a fraction of the players in those starting zones.
Please, don’t make feel old!
Nicely put. It reminds me of something Stephen King once said:
Sooner or later, everything old is new again.
I was shocked when I played on Nostalrius a few days. (I logged in the same day the shutdown was announced.) I was shocked that the game I played for 130 days /played during Vanilla and TBC was so much fun again.
That is why I signed the petition to bring it back. I loved the feeling it had - it was, “fresh” lol. The people and the gameplay was a breath of fresh air to WoW again.
People are not perfect and can be toxic - especially when isolated and anonymized by things like sharding.
But people are at their best when they know they are needed by others, which was one of the virtures of Vanilla and TBC WoW. You had to put on your best self because others depended on you…and you depended upon them to progress through everything the game had to offer.
Beyond “starters” would, by your own admission, include The Barrens. By extension, your very own post says that they do want to shard that zone.
Are you advocating that they do something that you acknowledge that they already said they did not want to do and also go back on their word?
And those that want the convenience that sharding provides wonder why those opposed to sharding have concerns about sharding being used beyond those “starting ateas” or “that brief time at launch”.
I will begin to trust that sharding will actually only be used in a VERY limited manner when Blizzard actually sets DEFINITIVE geographical and time limits for sharding.
IMO, using vague terms to imply that they are setting limits, but actually setting no limits, indicates plans to extend sharding beyond what they want us to believe and what they think people will initially accept.
I agree that a huge portion of players will drop. It may very well be 90%.
This is my biggest concern.
Blizzard, can you please give us a definitive answer for when sharding will be removed from Classic? This would greatly reduce my anxiety lol.