Our good friend Lore made a post on the Classic forums to indicate that Sharding will only be used short-term. Within his post, he stated:
11/02/2018 03:39 PMPosted by Lorewe know how crucial it is to the Classic experience for you to see your friends when you walk into Stormwind or when you’re helping them on a quest you’ve already completed.
This is very much true, however, I wonder why this should be any different with the current retail game? Right now, our realm community has been decimated by all of this sharding nonsense. Sometimes, we cannot even see guildies at the same location unless we are grouped up.
Realm populations have been further split up with the abolishment of the PvP ruleset. When I put War Mode on, I am now on a shard mixed in wih several other realms. The concept of realm community has been essentially destroyed.
My question to Blizzard: Why is my community less important than the Classic community?
For full disclosure, I will definitely be playing Classic. It’s just sad that my retail community, which was previously an outstanding realm, has to suffer that much because you couldn’t come up with a better way to manage populations.