I believe you may be drastically understating the respawn time and time waiting to have a chance to tag mobs if there is no sharding at launch. Even if there are 10 people in one area farming boars or apples, it’s incredibly annoying trying to out tag people. Also note that warriors will never get a tag compared to other classes. Now imagine 100s or 1000s going for the same boars and apples.
You will be forced to party up (which is a good thing!) to tag as much as possible but you will still be a drop in the bucket (which is a bad thing!) if there is no sharding in the beginning zones.
I say extend sharding to the first full zone, rather than starting area. But only allow sharding for the first week, then kill it. This will allow people to get through the most condensed zone (durotar, elwynn, etc) and open up additional leveling avenues at level 9-11.
Also worth noting for those who say they will just level outside of the starting area. You literally can’t skip the starting area and grind mobs because you’ll be crushed by mobs 2-3 levels above you.
Sure. And there might not be 30 servers, and there might not be 3 million people. These are all guesstimates. But the key thing is the methods of reacting to it. In order to avoid sharding, you’d have to estimate no more than about 450,000 people want to play at launch. To me that seems very low unless they do a concurrent release with 8.2, and even then, I think that more people are going to go to Classic than just the unsubbed Vanilla lobby.
You think they’re going to add servers while they’re still sharding? That seems to defeat the purpose of sharding. And in the first 20 levels, the first few days or maybe a week? At that point how are they going to be able to anticipate the long-term retention rate. So they add servers within a week, oops 30% of the players left between levels 20 and 30. Now you’re left with all these servers, and drastically reduced playerbase and they’re left with the exact scenario that sharding is supposed to fix.
My point is whatever metric they’re using for stopping sharding will be too late. Sharding the initial launch is only effective if their premise is correct that a large portion of the playerbase will flee relatively quickly. Because if that doesn’t happen…they’re left with the three options I outlined earlier. Sharding only delays the inevitable.
So what else can they do besides shard? I don’t know. I’m not a multi-million dollar company with access to all their technology. Maybe they can come up with another solution.
I’ve seen people suggest having numbered servers that are pre-destined to be merged down the line. A Illidan 1, Illidan 2, Illidan 3, for example. They share character names, guild names, anything that would be unique to an individual server. I know people will say, ‘But that’s just like creating three big shards!’. Yeah, not really. Because on each of those servers it’s still a full, complete, connected world. You won’t see players disappearing, reappearing. You won’t go to meet someone who’s in a different shard. You won’t hear about world events only to see you’re not on the correct shard. But anyway, when the populations decline they merge them, and communities are combined. And you know this is going to happen going in. That’s the important part.
I’ve also seen suggestions at having sharded (still just for launch) and non-sharded servers and give players the option. Players will know what they’re getting into and the risks they’re potentially taking by playing on an unsharded server. But that’s their choice.
I’m just spitballing here. But I’m very concerned that this whole sharding situation will be a giant mess if Classic is a success (has a decent retention rate). Because I think it’s going to be wildly successful.
I think they’re going to add servers when they see that the residual population leaving the sharded areas is going to be higher than their estimations. Which is the entire point. If more people are continuing to play after the first 12-24 /played then they need to add more servers to stem the flow on a given server.
How about the metric: “One week”.
Given the vast gulf between Retail and Classic, and the fact that the majority of those tourists will be Retail players who may have never even seen Wrath, yes, a lot of people will quit initially. Sharding isn’t to top people from playing Classic, and those people who quit in the first week may very well come back at a later stage. But by then populations will have settled and they can choose an overpopulated or underpopulated server as they wish.
The thing is, they’re limited to what they can already do, because Blizzard isn’t allowing them to write new infrastructure. They’re using the standard infrastructure so they have to be able to use what they have available. Server merges, possible. Conjoined guild and character naming, harder but not inconceivable. But as you said, they are the multi-million dollar company so if they come up with an idea we haven’t, great.
As yet, nothing that’s been shown really is a solution. Even the split server base works off the logic that the groups will settle down quickly. Leaving that too late and you’re smashing two fully formed communities together with a lot of fallout.
Ultimately, the hope is that after the first week or so, the hype and rush will have settled down to a point that normal server management techniques allow them to control new player joins such that servers are balanced and retain a decent population at the end.
I’d far prefer overpopulated servers than dead ones, 3 months in. Wouldn’t you?
WoW classic launch without sharding will literally be you standing around, watching a bunch of people with instant tag abilities steal all of the mobs. Eventually someone will cuss someone out for taking a tag and it will devolve into “git gud scrub” “l2p lmao”. C A N C ER… cant wait for sharding at launch, wont have to spend 3 hours in Elwynn.
An Elysium discussion in 2017? What makes that official?
I’ll have to try to look at the Classicast tonight. I don’t watch babbling heads, especially not at work. However, the answer I’m getting here is there are no original sources.
(Yes, Mark Kern worked for Blizzard, but this isn’t Mark Kern in 2004-2006 making an official statement. It is Mark Kern years later talking about what he remembers.)
Just goes to show peoples’ expectations of Classic will be far, far, from reality. You’re worried about questing in Elwynn for 3 hours? Let me tell you something: you could be the only player on the server and you’re going to be in Elwynn for much longer than 3 hours.
Correct me if I am wrong, but does the TOS (to which EVERY players agrees, BTW) not state that a subscription does not guarantee access to the servers at all times?
While I don’t think sharding is a bad way to go IF they limit it to the 1-10 starting zones and only first couple weeks, there is an easy answer for the problem.
Log in Queues. It’s not pretty… but it does the job.
Also, as you said, it won;t be the same as vanilla anyway… so who cares if there are 12,000 people zoned in? I’ve actually seen that, done that, it was pretty exciting. The bottleneck quests? Skip 'em and go on.
Some people did the Wetlands run going from Darnassus to IF getting level 5 about the time they got there.
The starting experience will be important… but not what makes or breaks the game Having the rewards vs effort system, the abilities, talent trees, professions, etc are what really counts.
As I said, I’m for limited sharding… but can live with the other two solutions just fine.
There’s a legal expectation of “realistic amounts of access”. If Blizzard has the capability of providing the service and doesn’t, there’s a case for reparations.
Good luck trying to get a lawyer to take that case.
“I know that I agreed to the terms and I KNOW that one of those terms was that they did not guarantee that I could access thr servers anytime I wanted to play. I didn’t think they really meant it, though.”