Hit the nail on the head on this one my friend.
Exhibit A ya’honah
The problem is, that these same people actually do normally think these things are a possibility. There honestly is no reason to even give these people the time of day.
Dig yourself a grave first then, b/c literally no one else cares ![:slight_smile:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/slight_smile.png?v=6" ":slight_smile:")
Agreed, that’s why I just move on when arguing with them. At some point, the gaslighting will be successful…possibly even a critical hit.
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Yup which is why I’m surprised some people have been talking to that guy for this long.
He actually quoted where Ion said sharding is going to be limited and actually though it was smart to declare: “They never said it was going to be limited”.
How can you have a logical discussion with a person like this? You can’t.
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I deemed it as irrelevant because it is. Sharding in this context refers to the game feature in WoW, not a broad industry term. If you weren’t talking about what this thread is about, you were off-topic, and your comments were irrelevant.
So am I, incidentally. Here’s my solution: no sharding. And, in this context, I mean sharding as in “intra-zone sharding.” Or is “intra-zone sharding” also some broad term?
As long as it’s not a game feature, sure. I don’t really care how they manage their back-end so long as it doesn’t affect the end user’s gameplay.
I’ve made concessions for battlenet integration and the modern client for that same reason.
Being part of a community doesn’t necessitate being in a party together, but I agree that the “sense of community” varies.
Uh… haha, okay.
I’d say I’m actually part of the majority of people in this case who don’t want sharding, and Blizzard is catering to a vocal minority that wants it.
Nor did I say you were. You quoted the full sentence, so try actually reading it.
“It’s not exactly a different kind of sharding, or anything; you just want to limit its implementation.”
Argue against it, you mean? Because that’s really easy: it wasn’t in vanilla.
Where did I do that?
I said specifically that you want sharding, but in a limited form. I was explaining that it’s not a DIFFERENT KIND of sharding, just DIFFERENT AMOUNTS. I did the exact OPPOSITE of what you accused me of.
Explain the difference between sharding in Elwynn and sharding in Westfall. It’s the exact same feature regardless of where it’s implemented.
Sharding is not one of those things, though. It is in no way necessary to provide us with Classic. Neither is loot trading, by the way.
No, it isn’t. Having to compete for mob tags and quest items with hundreds or thousands of other players doesn’t mean the launch isn’t smooth.
Since you’ve made it clear crashes aren’t why sharding is being implemented, the only reason you have left is that you don’t like competing. Too bad. That’s part of Classic.
The servers wouldn’t crash if they implemented caps on the servers, which is what would cause the queues in the first place.
Also, I thought you said crashes weren’t why sharding is supposedly being added?:
So which is it?
Then join a group.
Same. It was some of the best experiences I’ve had in WoW. I love seeing all those people, joining groups left and right for any and every quest, finding friends, etc.
It’s part of what I miss about vanilla that is sorely absent in retail. I’m not fond of the random nobodies running into the quest zone, starting and finishing without ever saying anything. It’s not at all MMO-like. That’s assuming, of course, that I ever even see anyone to begin with.
Eugh, no. No changes.
No. No changes.
- Okay, granted.
- and v
- Those are my posts, and I made it very clear that we don’t know. I was trying to explain that we don’t even know if sharding will be limited to certain zones, let alone in the game at all. I never said that sharding anywhere means sharding everywhere, nor did I even imply it.
- Granted.
- Did not say that sharding anywhere means sharding everywhere. Poster said that if it’s only 1-10 for a few weeks there wouldn’t be any issue, and they’ll be upset the more sharding is used.
- Same thing as 5, only this was my post. I also say I’d love to have a clear plan on what Blizzard will do regarding sharding. I didn’t say sharding anywhere would mean sharding everywhere. I just want to know ahead of time so I don’t waste my time leveling only to discover it’s not just in starting zones. I’m not saying that will happen.
Addons existed in vanilla and things you add to the game. They are not actually changes made to the game. But for what it’s worth, I want the old addon API, yes.
Also, discord isn’t part of the game. Nice try.
Actually, my arguments in this thread have been based on objective reality: sharding wasn’t present in vanilla.
It has nothing to do with not believing Blizzard. If anything, I’m the only one who has taken them at their word when they said they are considering adding sharding, not saying that they will be adding sharding.
Yeah, that’s definitely a concern. Perhaps a slim concern over something very unlikely to happen, but the argument is this:
If Blizzard is willing to make changes to Classic that were not in vanilla, what logical argument does anyone have against further changes? Some are more drastic, e.g. LFR. I think some would rightfully say “LFR is totally antithetical to vanilla.”
And that’s where the worry comes from. Even Blizzard said sharding was antithetical to vanilla, yet they’re considering adding it. What we were told is supposed to be a faithful recreation of vanilla is receiving more and more changes that pick away at what made the game so good.
Looks like you didn’t read much of this thread. Lots of people care, actually.
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The “community building” in Elwynn Forest during the first week of Launch will be minimal. People will be far more focussed on getting out of Elwynn Forest. However, the community building in say Eastern Plaguelands will be far more significant, thus “only starters” is the stance Blizzard is investigating, and the one many of us are comfortable with.
Its not necessary for you. It is necessary to meet Blizzard’s stated goal of a smooth launch without long queues or crashes.
Change that to thousands, and your statement falls down. If you ever read any response to you, many of us are advocating for shards with populations in the 200-500 range which means you would be competing with hundreds of people still. You wouldn’t be competing with thousands of people in a zone.
You’re a pessimist if you don’t think there will be millions of people attempting to play in the first week on the “limited number of servers”.
I did. And you ignored the actual responses about the options. They want to avoid Heavy Queues, and avoid Crashes. Without sharding you must have one or the other. They are more likely to take heavy queues than crashes, that would still result in a bad launch in their goals. But you continue to attempt only one aspect because you know that there’s no possible way to meet their goal without sharding.
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I’ll agree with that. People on both sides care. One side cares more about “no changes” and the other cares about a more stable launch and sustainable game going forward.
I think you’ll notice my argument for not having sharding has never been predicated on community building, and has more to do with the fact it didn’t exist in vanilla.
I’d be far more focused on getting out of Westfall, Redridge Mountains, Duskwood, Stranglethorn Vale (especially this one), and so on…
Everyone leveling is focused on getting out of those zones by leveling up to move on to the next one. So what is the argument against adding sharding to those zones if the reason for adding sharding is because people will be focused on getting out of the zone?
Also, I don’t think you explained the difference between sharding in Elwynn and sharding in Westfall. How are they two different kinds of sharding?
No, it’s not necessary at all. Just because you want it doesn’t make it necessary.
I thought crashes weren’t why sharding is being considered? Why do you keep bringing that up?
But okay, they don’t want queues. Why is sharding the only solution to that?
What do you mean “change that to thousands”? I said thousands. Again, you quoted the entire sentence. Try actually reading it.
Right, instead of the actual number of people that are in that zone, so just arbitrarily reducing competition because you can’t handle it.
No thanks.
Did you mean to quote and reply to something else, because this doesn’t seem like a valid response to what I said.
I never said otherwise. If anything, I think there will be far more demand for Classic than Blizzard can ever hope to expect. They have a consistent history of underestimating how hungry people are to play their new games.
Not really. Other solutions have been provided.
Hell, I went over one given all the concerns you and others have laid out.
No/short queues.
No crashes.
No realm merges.
Solution: do what Planetside 2 does. Put the server farm to use in a way that allows it to handle thousands of people in one area at a time without making them invisible to one another.
I rather think making no changes is vital to the game’s sustainability, but yeah, I’d rather have an unstable launch than changes.
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“Join a group”
Not going to solve the issue of server stability, nor the fact that even with grouping you’re still fighting with dozens of groups (instead of hundreds of solos sure) for the same few mob spawns.
Enjoy waiting an hour to get a Hogger kill because you weren’t standing on top of the spawn camping it.
Enjoy running around in circles attempting to get lucky and be standing on top of the spawn so you can melee it if you aren’t one of the lucky few classes that gets an instant cast ability early.
I’m not arguing to be able to solo quest my way through the starting zones. Joining a group is what I already planned on doing. But i’d much rather do it with 100 people in my immediate area rather than 500. Especially since, being realistic, over half of these people aren’t even going to make it past 20 anyway.
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Fair point, but sharding is not necessary to solving that issue.
Why is that a problem, exactly? Competition is part of vanilla.
It sounds like you know the solution to your problem already.
Or join a group with someone who does.
But yes, I do enjoy getting lucky with mob tags. I’ve gotten pretty good at it, actually.
Yeah, that’s the problem… everyone’s preferred population per shard is different.
If you want to compete with fewer people, level quickly and early, or start later. If you can’t level quickly and/or early because of competition, then I think you just need to find ways to deal with that competition. Ways, mind you, that don’t
involve just outright removing it or splitting it up into smaller chunks at the expense of the game’s authenticity.
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You have to get out of Elwynn Forest before you can get out of Westfall etc.
Given the time it takes for an average player to get out of 1-10 will be about 8 hours, and 1-20 about 20 hours, and that will be extended with congestion, the expectation is that 70%-90% of those millions of players in the first week, won’t get past level 10 before they put it aside to come back to later.
Taking the 70% value (personally I think it would be 90% but others have advocated for a lower) if 2000 enter Elwynn Forest, only 600 will leave. 600 people in Westfall at any given time doesn’t need sharding. There’s a very reasonable expectation that only a small percentage of each tier will progress, for the first 20 or 30 levels, and then past 30 those people will probably be the ones that keep playing.
The mechanic is the same, the effect is different. You brushed that off, despite the fact that that’s precisely the concern Blizzard raised in the discussion on sharding.
Please provide another solution that doesn’t result in dead servers a few weeks later?
No because the level of competition at the thousands mark is unplayable by those thousands of people.
a) Blizzard doesn’t intend writing an entire new infrastructure for classic. That’s what it meant by not having two MMOs.
b) The game environment was not designed for those numbers. You would have to create another mechanism, that of dynamic respawns, to satisfy that population, like Private Servers do. Which cause its own litany of problems.
But not a sustainable game? Once the game releases, people aren’t going to care about what happened in the first week, two months on. The sharding will have been switched off and just be a “memento” of a crazy busy launch.
You completely missed the responses about the other options like raising caps. It would be more inauthentic to have thousands of people in a starting zone, than seeing only 500 of the two thousand in the zone, compared to the Vanilla launch. Vanilla was not even as packed as 500 people in a zone.
Yep.
So we could just not have sharding, because they’ll just put it aside and come back later when there’s less competition.
It’s funny you say I’m pessimistic, yet you expect 9/10 people to quit Classic pretty early on. You’re so doubtful that people will enjoy the game, you’re against adding more realms to deal with server queues.
I expect a lot of tourists to play, as well, but I’d rather have server queues for a few days while they play and get bored than have sharding. Sharding is such a horrible feature.
Why not? What arbitrary number of people per square yard necessitates sharding? How do you come to that number?
Yep, which is the point I was making. It’s sharding, regardless of where you implement it.
The reasons for implementing the mechanic and/or the effect doing so has does not make it a different mechanic.
“Provide a solution, but any solution that isn’t the one they’re already using isn’t going to happen.”
Cool discussion.
No, it’s quite playable, actually. Some people just won’t like it, obviously. They probably shouldn’t be playing on launch day.
Right, which is why they had server caps of 2.5k and 6 different starting zones.
Of course I want a sustainable game. I said no changes is vital to the game’s sustainability.
Then why are you so heavily in favor of sharding to prevent server queues and crashes at the launch?
Well, we won’t know until it happens.
I didn’t miss those responses; I made them. I’m against those options, by the way, but I was listing it as a possible alternative to sharding.
I don’t care about trying to accurately represent the number of people in any given zone. That’s literally impossible. We don’t want a time machine; we just want the game to be the same as it was.
That means no sharding.
More people playing the game doesn’t mean the game has changed.
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And you tell me off for cutting quotes.
Also accurate. Or do you prefer to talk about things that will never happen. I’d like to have Blizzard make it so that the game runs with 0ms on my home PC and I don’t need to change any graphics performance please.
Of course you have to talk in terms of the Systems Blizzard already uses. Otherwise they’d have to develop new technology which they don’t need for anything but Classic, which they already said they won’t do.
So you’ll be using discord?
No, I never did that.
An accurate description of talking with you, yes.
I prefer to talk about things that can plausibly be done.
Not having sharding is a very plausible option. However, you are preemptively rejecting any and all alternative solutions to sharding while simultaneously asking for one.
Discord isn’t a change to the game, so yes.
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Creating an entirely new and previously untested framework for safely running thousands of people on a single zone is not something that can be plausibly done by Blizzard for Classic, yet you keep coming back to it as a holy relic. Blizzard is not developing new architecture for this product.
I actually enjoyed the unplayable launch of northdale. I had a dwarf paladin and having 20k people online at once was pretty amusing. It was also surprisingly stable for that. On a additional note to that Dynamic respawns where active or else it would have been a entirely different story.
I would prefer if Blizzard tossed up servers without sharding, normal spawn timers, and just let them cap at 3k and let people figure it out for themselves. Fighting to mobs, bickering, tricking people to type so they don’t tag a mob that is being camped, roaming for exp, chest ninjaing(was cash), etc… Life finds a way. Blizzard needs to go back to the roots of a chaotic experience. Nothing should be standardized, controlled, or anything as such. Just like the players create the world around them. Life was better in the past for a reason.
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I wouldnt say im comfortable with it.
Id say im willing to deal with it.
To quote you from a previous posts:
“I don’t want something that wasn’t present in vanilla to be present in Classic.”
Discord wasn’t present in vanilla. Also, since discord wasn’t present in vanilla, using it changes the game. To meet your vanilla standards, you should be using the voice chat that was included in the game (if there was one then).
I take it you are not that old then? I mean, we had plenty of options for voice-chat. Ventrilo, Mumble, Team-Speak and plenty of others. We weren’t exactly dinosaurs in 2004.