Because the vast, vast majority of the player base will barely notice it at all in the first place. The vast majority of the player base would rather play the game than either sit in queues, play at 3 FPS, or stare at “World Server Down” messages. The vast majority of players are GRATEFUL that Blizzard is doing this AT ALL to the point that they’d rather have this feature that empowers Blizzard to launch the game and make it available to everyone than not have it launch at all.
Finally, the die hard no sharders are going to storm off in a tantrum, and not sub anyway, be upset that they can’t post to the forums any more, and just write tin foil forum posts, blog articles and youtube rants on other media. So, since they’re not playing, they self-selected themselves as not being part of the player base anyway.
Sharding will not kill Classic. It won’t even hurt it. At worst, it’ll have annoying moments. Long term, it will very likely not activate at all.
Good post Piddy. I really believe that Blizz will shard and shard everywhere where it helps. Going to my post above, the no-change community will get some things they want but Blizz will also make changes to make gameplay fun for everyone. Think about it no-changers, there is a bigger, wider community to appease than you guys. In the end, their business is to increase value for shareholders. They will choose the best way to make money, and when they do the cost benefit analysis the potential audience for a new classic server is bigger than this forum.
I think you vastly underestimate how many people will be annoyed to high hell if sharding is a permanent fixture in classic.
With modern equipment we don’t have to worry about queues or 3 fps.
I think you vastly underestimate the majority, who don’t post or read the forums, who could honestly care less.
edit: there are a ton, much bigger, group of players they will draw from- the current retail players. They will get frustrated by all of the no-change stuff this small community is waiting with baited breath for.
This is one of the weakest arguments imaginable. The same sub pays for Classic and for BfA. The people who want LFG, dual-spec, etc. can just play BfA for exactly the same cost.
You don’t get it Phront. Because the same sub pays for both, Blizz already has a built in audience who are likely to play classic too.
edit: I said this before, the retail, current paying players are Blizz’s go to. If the no-changers sub for a month and quit because they don’t get what they want, Blizz still adds value to subscribers by offering a second play mode for retail. Those players could care less about classic being as authentic as you guys want.
The singular biggest issue with sharding is its potential impact on large, world PvP events. I certainly appreciate that limitation. I can see Tarren Mill being egregiously affected by that…maybe.
But for pretty much every other interaction, no. Not at all. Not for routine play out in the world. AT WORST you may have to party up with someone you’re trying to trade with in Ironforge on a spectacularly busy day to make sure you’re in the same shard. But that doesn’t affect you chatting with them, trading with them, grouping with them, friending them, etc.
Big picture, sharding has pretty much no effect. Which is completely different from CRZ, which has a gross effect on the world and the community.
Sharding is also less invasive and punishing than server merges, faction imbalance, and other nonsense that will happen if Blizzard has to over provision realms for a shrinking population. And make no mistake, the population WILL shrink. The novelty will wear off, and people will leave for other pastures. This will happen short term, it will happen mid-term, and it will happen long term as folks plateau and finish content on a server where the Dark Portal is permanently dark.
The dedicated, long term few will be far less than the initial surge and first few months of the game, no matter how much folks tell the disenchanted that they’re having a great time grinding through Vanilla.
No, you don’t get it. Classic, from the get-go, is meant to be a recreation of Vanilla, as close to exact as possible. That doesn’t mean “close except they’re going to modernize literally everything and add every controversial system back into the game for no reason.”
They know better than to do that. Watch the Blizzcon presentation about Classic from this year. They go into specific detail about how they’re making their decisions about what to change and what to leave in.
They even emphasized that they’re not making changes “even if the development team at the time would have made them if not for limitations,” because they’re delivering a time capsule experience.
You’re acting like Classic is supposed to be a hot new product to bring in millions of fresh players–that’s not what it is. It’s about delivering a long-sought option for players to return to the original state of the game. It’s not supposed to feel modern. It’s meant to feel restrictive, clunky, and strangely designed. Because that’s what it was, originally.
Classic was all about community. How is sharding good when it separates that community. When it actively lessens the chance I run into someone in the world?
Know how I got into my guild in classic? I saw a hunter kite mobs through a mages blizzard.
I saved the mage, helped him pick off the mobs, and killed the hunter.
He incited me to his guild .
Again, I guarantee you that the vast majority of players, who don’t post or read this, could give a flip about sharding except for when they see how craptastic it is to complete quests without sharding. Simple.
… blizzard themselves said they dont even want it at the starting zones but they feel they have to… so what makes you think they will make it permanent??
just because some morons want it permanent doesnt mean blizzard will listen to them…
you are yelling at blizzard to not do something they have said they dont intend to do anyway
That can still happen. You’ll still be seeing strangers out in the world. What you won’t see are people you don’t even know that they’re there. Just like you don’t see the guy that left the zone 5 minutes before you, or the folks that arrived 5 minutes after you left.
It just adds one more off chance of that not happening, it doesn’t eliminate it completely. And, in the end, you wouldn’t know that you didn’t see them in the first place. You don’t know if there’s one shard where you are or a dozen. You’ll be caught up in your questing doing your thing.
And when someone calls out “Hey can some help me with the Ogres?”, you can party up (because you WILL party up), run over to them and, hey, there they are. Friend them, join their guild, go to their wedding in meatspace. Almost as if sharding wasn’t happening at all!