Finraziell - Here in the Technical Support forums, we help with gathering information on occasion, but we are not the developers. We assist with technical issues that can be resolved through troubleshooting and present workarounds if available. As Zungar mentioned, for issues that appear to be a bug and needs attention from folks who can make the necessary changes, the Bug Report forum is recommended since the appropriate team will monitor the bug report forums 
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We understand that the bug report forums would be the place to go if something was not working as intended, but that’s not the same as what’s happening here. Unfortunately what’s happening here is we do not have access to the people who can resolve our issue (seemingly).
Sharding works perfectly and that is precisely the problem. We need them to recognize that Sharding simply isn’t the right option for RP realms, and until that happens, we need someone who knows who to talk to about getting our cities un-sharded again to talk to them and make it happen.
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That’s good, but as stated before, people having posted in the bug report forums fell on deaf ears in the past. I’m not trying to argue with you, but clearly if people have witnessed examples of Blizz not doing anything and it wasn’t until being posted elsewhere that something finally got done that shouldn’t have been changed really in the first place, then it would indicate that there needs to be a better place to post things to the correct team to fix in a more timely manner.
OR, better communication from blizzards stating they KNOW about sharding and RP servers and will be more proactive about disabling it sooner in the future instead of us always having to resort to this road every time it happens.
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To add to that, it’s not just that we want something changed going forward, like it’s feedback or something. The custom ruleset to disable sharding has been in place for RP servers almost since the inception of sharding/phasing (Mists-ish?) and was extended to the whole world in legacy content on those servers since about one or two summers afterward.
When one-off events come up that re-enable sharding temporarily - something that understandably happens, and we try to be patient about the necessity for the most part - we always end up needing to rattle around from forum to forum after the event ends trying to bring it to someone’s attention that a manual fix needs to be enabled to restore the previous functionality of no sharding (and explain, and re-explain, that we’re not asking for something new, this is a ruleset that has been in place for about a decade now). And that is usually a very frustrating, weeks-long uphill battle with people getting progressively more upset until it finally falls on the right ears, so people are weary and on-edge from years of struggle with this issue.
If we knew where “the right place” was and saw that going there caused movement on the issue, or there was a defined process, or if someone could just like…stick a post-it note to their monitor that said, “Event starts 5/25, re-disable sharding in SW/Org on RP servers on 6/15” it would save a lot of people a lot of headaches. Posts to the Bug Reports forums (although I see that Irakaius has done that also now) haven’t caused any movement on the issue in the past. Neither have in-game bug reports, or posting to General Discussion.
I’m sure it seems like a weird non-issue to a lot of people internally and externally, but having no sharding in population centers on RP servers makes our silly, nerdy hobby possible. Not just it makes it better, it makes it possible. Otherwise our communities are fragmented and can’t see and interact with each other, it makes it impossible to hold large events or have populated cities. It isn’t a matter of convenience, it’s a matter of having most of the people who play on Moon Guard and Wyrmrest accord, big swaths of people a lot of whom only subscribe to do this, through content lulls and without clamoring for new big expensive raids and generally dropping tons of real cash on transmog, mounts and pets, inclined to keep playing.
This always seems to take Blizzard’s internal team by surprise, that this happens, and it seems to always take a lot to get people to understand what’s happening and how to fix it. If there’s a better process we’re all ears, we’d love to have a more expedient way to have the issue addressed.
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This
This
THIS
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I can confirm this. If sharding were more of an issue I would’ve given up on this game ages ago and never returned no matter how much I like the world. If not for the scale of the RolePlay community on these realms, Blizz wouldn’t have my money.
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Pretty sure most of us on MG would have collectively chosen another game lol.
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Hi, Blizzard. Bumping this thread again.
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Blizzard, Stormwind is the heart of the rp community on every active rp realm. Please, end this lack of community consideration. End sharding in Stormwind and everywhere else on RP servers too.
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Hoping it ends sooner than later. =/
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where were u wen stormwind sharded
i was at house eating dorito when phone ring
“roleplay is kil”
“no”
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I dont even rp in Stormwind but I like to people watch. Please turn off sharding. Also I like to throw rainbows on my friends, how can I do that if they are in a weird alternate shattered universe.
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Commenting again to remind people us RPers are sad, angi, and want to play with our dolls 
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Incredibly bizarre idea. I’m not sure it’s ever been tried in infrastructure of this nature before but uhhh have they considered just using beefier hardware and/or architecture for the literal 2 active and super heavily populated RP servers (Moon Guard and Wyrmrest Accord) in North America Region (plus idk Argent Dawn in EU)?!?
What’s that? Costs more? Well you know what earns more are roleplayers who never unsub like raiders during content droughts so throwing us a bone in this way is the least they can do given the disproportionate income we throw their way versus normal players. Sharding where necessary on RP realms should be done geographically with utmost effort given in design to keep everyone in a given area (Stormwind for instance) in the same shard while if necessary for server resources shunting off say people in Elwynn, Duskwood, Redridge, Ironforge, Orgrimmar, etc onto other resources.
I get if they might have to turn it on for events like this that bring lots of players to SW but I kind of wish it was a lot more dynamic (e.g. it turns itself on when players start flooding an area in disproportionate numbers during a special event, then turns itself off when they dissipate and is disabled wholly once the event ends).
Someone might bring up city raids and that’s a good point, how about special logic, if you’re opposite faction, flagged for PVP and entering Stormwind you get shunted off into a special shard and can only see those alliance who themselves flag for pvp combat. Not ideal, but given they haven’t felt confident in the hardware to be able to give us old school 2004-2008 era open world large-scale player happenings in oh a decade now, it’s a necessity of what they’ve painted themselves into with these architectural choices in the first place. I’d go so far in fact to say anyone continuously casting heavy combat spells (whether in combat or not) should be shunted away from others to prevent lag and griefing of RPers via groups of players spamming abilities which overwhelm graphics cards. Not that this has been seen to be an issue as city raids of any considerable size (30+ players and 30+ fighting them) are an incredibly rare, maybe a few times an expac experience these days).
Oh why bother. They spit on us at every turn. No one ever joins Blizzard game design because they love RPing and care for the lore (if they had they would have quit after the BFA through SL chainsaw taken to the lore debacle (yes I’m still angry, we’re still angry, we’ll likely be angry for the next 10 years or forever about certain things done because a leash wasn’t kept by corporate on a certain monstrous dev and the fix for his excesses were inelegant and deeply problematic), they join to do encounter design, make the big bads, the super cool dungeons and raids, design pretty armor, and maybe do math nerd stuff around class balance and so on.
We know for a fact that WrA and MG represent some of the largest servers in terms of total monthly active player population. When a city has a main road artery or two that sees disproportionate heavy use, it gets favored for maintenance, reinforcing, etc. Yet this isn’t the case here because they consider sharding and the architecture question a resolved one, put off until there’s some emergency which has management breathing down their necks because it’s breaking the game or costing too much.
It also isn’t the case because they take us for granted. And maybe they should, they’ve abused us to the n’th degree with every indignity and yet we keep taking it. With all respect to the devs and their unenviable situation with quittings and low morale, we shouldn’t have to ask with a smile and sweetness and doting praise. It should be a forceful demand. This is a basic feature of gameplay for RPers. They broke the game, they broke the MMORPG massive experience when they put in sharding. I understand their hands are somewhat constrained by management, cost concerns, tech debt they can’t afford to entirely rewrite and fix, etc. But the fact they don’t even have the consideration to remember us to turn it off in a timely fashion is unacceptable.
A better solution than devs having to manually turn it back off again must be implemented. Turn-key, automated, time-based, event-driven. Or you know just put in some beefier hardware and work in some special logic for RP realms only (well the populated ones, all 3 across NA and EU).
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Kindly just stop sharding on Rp realms in general.
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Annnnnnd this thread has been moved again.
It’d be awesome if y’all could get on the same page about how to address this. My would-you-kindlys and lack of pitchforks are ebbing rapidly.
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Hmm, so that explains why I only see like two people in SW. I’m on Sisters which, to my knowledge, no one actually RPs on anymore, but I still agree the sharding needs to go.
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I do hope this is able to be resolved in a timely manner.
Sharding ain’t great, it’s even less so when you’re just wanting to RP with folks.
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Stop Sharding.
That’s it, said it.
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So, you chose the troll as your visage form?
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