Just did a PvP event and alliance had over 3 times more people than us. Which can only mean the sharding has been removed.
If true, thank you blizz for taking out this atrocious feature. This is the way wPvP is supposed to be.
Whenever I tried to PvP before, people kept getting layered away and couldn’t keep the raid together.
First of all, classic doesn’t have sharding. It has layering which is entirely different. Secondly, you are probably just clueless to what is happening in the game.
They didn’t remove layering.
It did have sharding. If you did wPvP raiding in the last couple of months, you would know what I’m talking about. It is this:
This system is effectively sharding. It has been incredibly frustrating to deal with. You could be on the same layer as the enemy, yet not see each other. Or you could be in a full 40 man raid, then immediately upon entering the zone half your raid randomly disappears. These hidden sublayers made it impossible to do PvP events.
But it seems to have been changed or removed entirely, because the normal problems I have come to expect when doing large scale wPvP didn’t happen this time. Call it faction balanced layers (there were hidden sublayers) or whatever, I’m just glad they fixed it.
highly doubt they removed the sharding 
It doesn’t have sharding. That is a retail feature.
Classic has layers.
It doesn’t have sharding. You can’t change reality with a stupid post.
anniversary has them too
It doesn’t have sharding. It has layers.
It even says so in the blue quote. LAYERS.
Why are you people so bad at reading.
Ok sublayers to the layers on a zone by zone basis. Whatever you want to call it. It was a terrible system that they created for fresh and it seems to have been recently changed for the better.
It doesn’t make zone copies. Layers are entire continents.
You can not read.
It says, they transfer players to another LAYER if one is not balanced.
Holy cow your education has failed you.
You don’t know what you’re talking about. There 100% were zone based “shards” being used. Something has changed very recently.
Coincidentally, the map seems to be fixed as well. Raid members no longer appear in the middle of the ocean when forming raids. Which was another long suspected symptom of this sharding system that was in use.
It’s not sharding.
It is just moving players between existing layers to balance the zones.
It’s not creating new zones that are indepnent of layers. It can’t. It doesn’t have sharding.
It can only create new CONTINENTS WHICH ARE LAYERS.
This version of the game only has LAYERS. LAYERS ARE ENTIRE CONTINENTS.
Can you read english.
We had 2 raids and nobody got forced away. And alliance had ~200 people, all on the same layer. It really seems like something has changed. Which is good.
They are just messing with the algorithm that does the blancing.
It’s just like when you swap layers. The game can do it to you whenever it wants.
It’s just moving people between layers.
How is this hard to understand???
You are a completely clueless person about this topic.
You keep talking like you know, but it’s obvious you haven’t experienced it.
There were shards. Not sure why this is the hill you want to die on. It was plainly obvious to everyone who actually did large scale wPvP. You wouldn’t know because you just solo gank people.
It is just moving you or other people To different layers.
If you had a addon like nova world buffs you’d see there is always like 3-9 layers.
It is just moving people around these layers to balance.
Obviously they are working out bugs in the algorithm and are trying things out.
THIS GAME DOESN’T HAVE SHARDING.
REPEAT
THIS GAME DOESN’T HAVE SHARDING.
The point you keep not getting, is people tested this stuff. You could take two people and look at nova world buffs. It says you are both on layer 2. Yet you can’t see each other.
There were additional sublayers that you couldn’t see or control. It’s functionally the same as sharding.
The point you are not getting is sharding is completely and entirely different from layers.
It does not exist in this game.
You are using a word incorreclty because you are a completely clueless person.
Sharding is making new zones or even smaller areas on the fly to balance.
This game can’t do that. It can only create new ENTIRE CONTINENTS. That means, entire new eastern kingdom or entire new kalmidor.
That is the smallest area it can create.
It can’t shard a zone.
Therefore it doesn’t’ have SHARDING.
Instead of sharding, they are just layer swapping people on the fly when one layer is to full in a certain zone.
That’s exactly what it is and exactly what was happening. Not sure why you are so persistent in denying it. There have been numerous complaints about it since launch. It’s clear you haven’t participated in large scale wPvP.
I made this thread to see if others have noticed the change in behavior that I noticed today.
No it’s not happening because the game can’t do it.
It’s not possible.
It’s not a feature of this version of the game.
They only can create layers.
There are no shards.
You are a completely clueless person. You need to stop talking.
You are just confused because you see it swap people between layers.
That is not what sharding is you 
Sharding is making an instance of a zone like a dungeon instance. This game can not do that.
It simply can not do it.
It can’t.
It’s like you car can’t fly. It just can’t fly.
no thats not what that means. Each zone is layered individually. Which isn’t anything special. Barrens 1 being different from Ashenvale 1 had little to no impact on how layering worked before. The difference is that now they force people to swap layers for pvp balance instead of what it was before: Which was forced layering only when the servers started to die from too many people on the same layer.
Theres so little different about how it works now from how it worked before that its barely worth mentioning.