SWTOR using shards?

[Victoriaautmors]

Ive just read a review of SWTOR in a magazine and according to it the biggest flaw of the game are these "shards''.

Basically every zone has several copies of it called shards, and players of both factions are distributed among them, and it seems you can swtich shards and so on. Not only does this kill world pvp it also makes grouping and questing with mates somewhat clunky and strange since you have to go to the same shard.

I have played beta and i understand why SWTOR would not handle huge leveling crowds well since it just doesent fit into its cinematic feel but still i hate this idea.

I have been wondering will these shards be removed? Or possibly already are?

[Deleted]

there's nothing clunky or strange about it with group members, but it limits world pvp, albeit I play on a PVE server so I don't care much.

It also limits world lag aswell. I doubt they will be removed.

[Matchu]

Shards seems a weird name, I'm sure they're just called phases or something ingame.

They're actually one of the things I've praised SWTOR for. Even in the madness of the first few days, I wasn't fighting too much for quest mobs. Most of that was because the population was spread over 5 or so phases ingame (based on guildies, there could be many more).

As for world pvp, removing them in those specific areas would be an ideal fix. For "true" world pvp, there's always people in your phase.

[Deleted]

I've had more World PvP since Tatooine than I've had since WotlK was released, general chat is shared throughout the shards so you've no issue finding groups, I really don't see a downside to them.

[Deleted]

There are a lot of shards on the early planets but i think there is like 100 + people a shard , i haven't paid too much attention to it but i think since about level 30-35ish i haven't seen any sharding all the way up to 50.

[Deleted]

Shards are in and are not a problem at all in my opinion, try to do quests in a starting zone with 600 characters and tell me if u find the item u need.
I guess shards are tuned to 200ish now, so there is only 1 shard in your zone if less then 200 players, I can tell u that at level 40 yesterday I had 60 players in my zone.
Changing shard when u have to group up, if needed, is not a problem.

[Victoriaautmors]

Imo its not a mmorpg without a true open world. If shards are 200+ its not that bad but its and awsome game and i really hoped for epic world pvp across all the different planets this is disappointing.

[otinar]

Actually shards was the name they 1st gave to servers, but I guess they followed the trend and now they are servers ass all other games.

The thing you are calling shards are actually instances or phases that do what you say.

There are good and bad things to it but we can live with them just fine.

[Neotokyo]

they are refered to as instances in game, you can see which instance of a planet you are by bringing up your map and looking at the bottom right hand corner, you will see the name of the planet you are and a number in brackets.. the number is the instance you are in. Its also very easy to switch between them for grouping as the general channel covers the entire planet not specific instances. When you join a group with a player in another instance it asks if you want to switch. You can aslo d it by going to your map and selecting one of the other instances.

[ContentsMayVary]

The Shards work brilliantly. The number of shards scales with the number of players automatically. This ensures that there are never too many people in an area, but also that there are never too few.

Using shards means that they can fit more people on a single server, which will help to ensure a healthy population in the future after numbers fall back a bit (if they do).

Switching yourself between the shards is pretty easy, and the game prompts you if you group with someone in a different shard.

[h3lladvocate]

This is a pretty typical technique, not surprised to see something like this, especially with the high release. Also BTW, Shard or "sharding" is a database technique to split data across sudo-isolated instances, probably where they got the name.

[Victoriaautmors]

I agree this can be great for a first month and when they add new planets but this really is a terrible idea in general, i hope they improve their infrastructure or whatever.

I really see no need for instancing where the game world isnt even seamless (which is expected with different planets ofc) it sends a very bad message about their competence.

[Matchu]

I really see no need for instancing where the game world isnt even seamless (which is expected with different planets ofc) it sends a very bad message about their competence.

So you like fighting over stuff? You enjoy the wait while something respawns? It happens now; it'd certainly happen more in a world without phases.

Also, I believe the number of phases is dictated by the number of people on the planet. So you're not going to end up with 50 phases and 1 person in each.

[Victoriaautmors]

No i dont like fighting over quest mobs but i love the feeling of a world or even better a dangerous world, the feeling that i miss in WoW the most, and some of my fondest memories are places like STV, Plaguelands , Hillsbrad or Elemental Plateu etc in these zones you had a feeling of danger since you knew they were stalked by some known PVPers of the enemy faction and it really was awsome.

Shards really kill this. At least they should make some special PVP server without this for people who would prefer to suffer lagg or a crowd in a quest area if it means we get a real virtual world not a bunch of instances.

[davesurfer]

No i dont like fighting over quest mobs but i love the feeling of a world or even better a dangerous world, the feeling that i miss in WoW the most, and some of my fondest memories are places like STV, Plaguelands , Hillsbrad or Elemental Plateu etc in these zones you had a feeling of danger since you knew they were stalked by some known PVPers of the enemy faction and it really was awsome.

Shards really kill this. At least they should make some special PVP server without this for people who would prefer to suffer lagg or a crowd in a quest area if it means we get a real virtual world not a bunch of instances.

This is a whole bunch of noise over nothing. The only place I have seen "shards" in use is the starter planet and DK. These are places that you can't even PvP in I believe. After that I have not seen more than one shard per planet and I am on a Full server

So I just see folks complaining for complaining sake

[Maeleena]

World PVP has been dead in MMO's for almost a decade, so I don't see a problem here, and having multiple phases for planets is a good thing, because I don't want to have to put up with the lag and a billion other people trying to do the same quests as me, making it take longer to do a quest than it should.

One thing I wish they would do is that when you join a group for a heroic group quest and then enter the phase wall, it puts everyone in the same phase of that group instance no matter which instance you are in the world, that way stopping the annoyance of having to phase hop when joining groups.

[Ighox]

World PVP has been dead in MMO's for almost a decade, so I don't see a problem here, and having multiple phases for planets is a good thing, because I don't want to have to put up with the lag and a billion other people trying to do the same quests as me, making it take longer to do a quest than it should.

One thing I wish they would do is that when you join a group for a heroic group quest and then enter the phase wall, it puts everyone in the same phase of that group instance no matter which instance you are in the world, that way stopping the annoyance of having to phase hop when joining groups.

Has been dead in WoW for almost a decade you mean?
Plenty of games out there with world PvP.

The shards/instances are just there for overpopulated zones so I don't really see a issue, we probably won't see it that much when most people get to 50, it's not like there's 10 almost empty instances at all times that you just can switch to so it's fine, when a new instance gets created both of them has a good enough population.

[Maeleena]

Has been dead in WoW for almost a decade you mean?
Plenty of games out there with world PvP.

Name on with actual good World PVP. There isn't one. I hope 'Outlaws Den' is better.

[Ighox]

Name on with actual good World PVP. There isn't one. I hope 'Outlaws Den' is better.

Eve, Darkfall.

And even though there might not be many games which currently has good world PvP there have been many good world PvP periods during MMORPG's that has been released within the past 10 years, even AoC, Aion and WAR had awesome world PvP for a while.

Oh, and Outlaw's Den is a shit zone to be honest, same is Ilum, but it's still pretty fun.
In Ilum people "win-trade" for quests so everyone is against PvP, so when you come there and PvP you start a war and get flamed by everyone, so it's great fun.
Outlaw's Den is a really small zone with really small rewards, but it's still fun.

[Maeleena]

Eve, Darkfall.

Two horrible games imo, but you may be right, but barely anyone plays them anymore because they are so dated, but even so, I meant a more modern MMO and not one that has been around forever.