Why Any Form Of Sharding Is Bad

[Caltheon-stormrage]

If they shard the first 6 levels, if they shard for just a few weeks, you are setting up wow classic to have further issues. Here is why I believe this is the case.

Vanilla wow was a community driven game. When the game launched, servers were crowded and overpopulated because blizzard underestimated the success of wow. However over time blizz added more servers, making the playing field more even so to say. I use to love joining these server launches, I would not be there for long but the feeling of everyone starting from scratch and clawing their way to the top was amazing.

Classic is a community game first. Your server, is your community. If you shard, even if it is only for the first six levels, you are taking people out of that community. There will be several new vanilla players, and those players need to realize exactly how things are. When you take them out of those communities via sharding, you are giving them the chance to form/continue the bad habits that modern day wow is responsible for.

Sure, the first few weeks are going to be crowded. People are not going to move at the pace they would like. However you have to consider that there will be a great deal of people quitting because classic is just not for them. When you shard, even if just for an hour, you are giving people instant gratification, when in reality classic gives the furthest thing from.

People need to learn how to work together, how to be kind to the community they now belong to. Servers will be jenky (because let’s face it, underestimating a launch seems like a business practice for blizzard). In this first week, people will form friendships as it will be far easier to work together in the earlier stages. However once again, when you shard even if it’s for the first six levels, you are doing something that will literally be detrimental to the early health of each server.

No changes. Do not shard. Stop trying to spoil people, if you want to give people a true vanilla experience, let them suffer with the high population overcrowded servers like we did at launch. They will be stronger for it. People will immediately known who they want to group with and who they don’t. The most beautiful feature of classic wow is the community, when you take that away even for the first few levels for a few weeks, you are taking a knife to the heart of what vanilla wow is.

One of the big reasons I have been craving vanilla is the sense of belonging that went out the window with dungeon finder and cata guilds. Experiencing vanilla without sharding is showing people that they can’t just be another speechless character like in modern.

Thank you for listening to my rant. I played from the open vanilla beta in 04 onwards. I am very passionate about vanilla for many reasons. I hope you will consider no sharding at all blizzard. People need to learn what the vanilla wow community is like at the very beginning.

[Sabetha-turalyon (Sabetha)]

I’m not a fan of sharding, but one thing it does do it let them have higher server populations to handle the initial rush and have more of a buffer for later on when the tourists begin to leave.

Even in retail back before cross realm things, dead servers were a reality when WoW had runaway growth rates. This time, not only will we not see that kind of growth but there will be a drop off as the tourists leave.

If they didn’t shard, they need to be prepared to merge. Both of those things can do significant damage to server communities.

[Enmasse-wyrmrest-accord]

They aren’t going to change their mind on this one. Have you seen how trash the servers are now? If they remove sharding from the initial levels the servers would probably delete themselves out of shame.

[Nechross-eonar-37277 (Nechross)]

Amen. I don’t want any sharding (or any modern conveniences). I just want Vanilla WoW.

Why? Because I want my old community back. Modern conveniences and technology (such as sharding) have killed the community and the game I once loved.

At Blizzcon 2018, Blizzard stated the goal of this project is to recreate the authentic experience of Vanilla World of Warcraft. That experience did NOT include sharding.

One of the most important Vanilla game mechanics is limited resources. Limited resources fosters community because it forces you to rely on your fellow adventurer - to offer help and receive help and maybe become friends.

Sharding eliminates others from the world around you (i.e., realm mates, potential friends).

Sharding diminishes the authentic experience of server launches in Vanilla.

J. Allen Brack said he understands how important the authentic Vanilla experience is for this community and sharding is not something wanted.

Brack is clear that using modern server architecture doesn’t mean that these Classic servers will have the same features that current World of Warcraft does. There won’t be cross-realm servers or Looking For Raid and Dungeon Finder automatic party matchmaking. There’s still a lot of questions about how the team will tackle it, but Brack says they’re committed to recreating an authentic Vanilla World of Warcraft experience. “One of the tenets of Classic WoW is none of the cross-server realms and different [server] sharding options that we have available to us today. There’s a lot of desire on part of the community that this is something that they don’t want.”

– Source PC Gamer: www[dot]pcgamer[dot]com/this-is-how-blizzard-plans-to-finally-bring-back-vanilla-wow-servers/

I miss the community and the feeling of living in ONE WORLD of Vanilla WoW. I don’t want players to be anonymous ghosts who appear/disappear around me - like they do today in modern WoW - and mean nothing to me and I to them.

• The need to interact with others creates community.
• Sharding eliminates the need to interact others.
• Therefore, sharding eliminates community.

Needing others and feeling needed by others (i.e., community) is, IMHO, one of the the most awesome experiences of Vanilla WoW - and I miss it.

[Vhok-misha (Vhok)]

i do not want crashing servers and huge queues. so sharding for the first zone for the first week or whatever is what i want.

[Gorwarth-khazgoroth (Gorwarth)]

However over time blizz added more servers, making the playing field more even so to say.

Prior to sharding technology, any significant content launch or mass congregation of players crashed servers, caused lag or caused server queues. Its 2019, I do not want to deal with such performance constraints which were a technical limitation of 15 years ago. We have technology that lets the world feel populated and alleviates the burdens of queues, lag and crashes, its called sharding. Vanilla wow should not have CRZ but it should have sharding. Sharding that only kicks in when too many players concentrate in one area, with preference for friends, guildies and equal level characters to be in the same shard.

Classic is a community game first. Your server, is your community. If you shard, even if it is only for the first six levels, you are taking people out of that community. There will be several new vanilla players, and those players need to realize exactly how things are. When you take them out of those communities via sharding, you are giving them the chance to form/continue the bad habits that modern day wow is responsible for.

How about you dont play for the first few weeks while the sharding tech is in place. If its so loathsome to you, come play once the bulk of people have moved on and sharding low levels, is no longer necessary for the stability of the game.

if you want to give people a true vanilla experience, let them suffer with the high population overcrowded servers like we did at launch.

And credit them for the time while servers are offline being emergency patched/updated, just like back in the day. Also cap the server bandwidth and resources and enforce other technical constraints that make no sense (disc I/O because we didn’t have SSDs back then).

Experiencing vanilla without sharding is showing people that they can’t just be another speechless character like in modern.

Honest questions, what do you think sharding is? When do you think it will happen?

I think there are polar opposites of where the world is too populated and when it feels like a ghost town. Sharding can fix the over populated problem, CRZ is used to solve the underpopulated.

I am vehemently against CRZ but think sharding is absolutely necessary for the starter zones.

[Nechross-eonar-37277 (Nechross)]

Why no sharding? Nixxiom explains the reasons well. I don’t want two-hour loot trade windows or any other “Quality of Life improvements.” I don’t want anything that minimizes social interaction and makes life “easier” in WoW - I want it just like it was, which is the whole point of this project.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0smIlSqMYs

Blizzard, please STOP attempting to introduce ANY non-Vanilla game mechanics (like trade windows) or non-Vanilla gameplay-technology (like sharding).

I don’t want “New Vanilla” or “Classic Vanilla” - I just want VANILLA. As J. Allen Brack said at BlizzCon 2017, it’s our favorite flavor.

[Mysfyre-norgannon (Mysfyre)]

We’re not playing on toasters anymore. There is no reason to shard.

Also, how are they going to shard the log in server? We’re all going to be sitting in queue to log in.

Sharding is not for us, it’s for them, and has NO positive influence on classic. If it’s allowed anywhere, it will be everywhere, so we cannot let it infect the game.

How about you dont play for the first few weeks while the sharding tech is in place. If its so loathsome to you, come play once the bulk of people have moved on and sharding low levels, is no longer necessary for the stability of the game.

How about you don’t play for the first few weeks until the rush has subsided? See how that works? It doesn’t.

Sharding low level zones will just spread to the rest of them. Blizz will use the initial wave as an excuse to expand sharding to any zone with a high population.

[Velwind-moon-guard]

Sharding isn’t JUST for server performance; it’s to help prevent dead servers after the tourists leave. Anyone subbed to BfA will be able to log in and artificially inflate server numbers. Once they’ve had their look-see and leave, we want to make sure servers aren’t ghost lands.

[Fesz-cenarius]

How about you dont play for the first few weeks while the sharding tech is in place. If its so loathsome to you, come play once the bulk of people have moved on and sharding low levels, is no longer necessary for the stability of the game.

How about you wait until the initial rush is over to start playing? If the competition is so loathsome to you, come play once the bulk of people have moved.

[Gorwarth-khazgoroth (Gorwarth)]

Like ~14 years later? Oh wait…

[Strio-proudmoore]

Meh, I didn’t play for the community; I played because the game was awesome. The community wasn’t even there at launch and people still loved it.

[Calciumplus-misha (Calciumplus)]

I’d infinitely prefer merges to sharding; however, I am not opposed to noob-zone sharding for the first week or two.

[Jarcola-dalvengyr (Jarcola)]

Good idea, if I have to deal with an impossible load in starter zone 1-5 i’m going to make a bank alt and another alt, then run a marathon gathering flight paths on alts.