Should Vanilla have sharding tech?

[The Stormbringer]

It's a deal breaker for me if they include sharding. Community is one of the primary things for me in Classic, other than that it's a side show attraction that won't be worth the grind.

So is Sharding for the first five levels, for the first couple of weeks, really going to impact Community?

[Demithio]

So is Sharding for the first five levels, for the first couple of weeks, really going to impact Community?

This might be ok if millions of players flock to see the "new" vanilla. However, after the current crop of WoW kiddies scurry off the classic servers, Blizzard needs to be pro active and remove sharding as it will no longer be necessary.

[The Stormbringer]

This might be ok if millions of players flock to see the "new" vanilla. However, after the current crop of WoW kiddies scurry off the classic servers, Blizzard needs to be pro active and remove sharding as it will no longer be necessary.

I think there's a chance they might extended it to the first month or two, depending on how high the traffic is, but I sincerely doubt they'd keep it long term. Eventually there just won't be enough characters in starting zones for it to matter.

[Deleted]

Only in the starting zones for 2 weeks or so if they really have to use it. I want the chaos though.

[Unholyground]

I sharded after eating too much pizza once.

[chronia]

I don't remember any Blizzard employee actually stating that is would be removed after 1-2 weeks.

Actually, they never indicated that it would be removed at all. Only that it would be used when "necessary". It will always exist as code.

That should be obvious tbh, that they would turn off sharding after the initial launch is over and not remove the code al together.

And it can be used when too many people are in StormWind / Ironforge .. too many doing a PVP capitol city raid, too many on a world boss. It's rather open ended. Whatever the threshhold for "necessary" is.

They kind of already talked this over in the Blizzcon panel, where for example they already said they very well understand that sharding isn't Vanilla like and "that there should only be one Kazzak up at a time per realm", basicly confirming that Worldboss area's won't be able to shard.

The ideal solution would have been dynamic spawning. But I don't think Legions can handle that.

Legion (and also BFA and possibly the whole game by now) has dynamic spawning, there are quite a few farm spots where if you kill fast enough you can basicly force permanent insta spawn mobs.

I wouldn't say dynamic spawning is the ideal solution though, imho it breaks immersion more than temporary sharding. Seeing tons of pl standing still on a spawn spot where mobs are spawning every second is far far from ideal either.

[Deleted]

Slippery slopes are slippy.

Also, I was on a launch of a vanilla server with 14k players starting at once. Was great fun, would try again.

[chronia]

Slippery slopes are slippy.

Also, I was on a launch of a vanilla server with 14k players starting at once. Was great fun, would try again.

Talking about the slipperyness of slopes and then talking about servers with 14k players....
You can't really be nochanges and using the slippery slope arguement and then condoning private servers with a straight face.

[Kyphael]

Sharding makes me lag badly. That or the new shit wow voice system.

[Deleted]

Talking about the slipperyness of slopes and then talking about servers with 14k players....
You can't really be nochanges and using the slippery slope arguement and then condoning private servers with a straight face.

Make sense mate.

[Saverem]

NO! It should be same experience as when WoW first released. Shit fuck ton of people competing to kill same boar and server lags/crashes. THAT IS WHAT WE HAD.

[Nerovar]

Sharding makes me lag badly. That or the new shit wow voice system.

I feel like they've fucked up their servers when they introduced all the sharding BS. Since BfA you can't even have city raids without massive lag.

[Deleted]

I feel like they've fucked up their servers when they introduced all the sharding BS. Since BfA you can't even have city raids without massive lag.

I think it's on purpose that they're worse, for something as silly as reduced costs.

[evogsr]

Totally against sharding - even for retail. Everyone realizes that sharding does have some benefits but has been one of, if not the most corrosive systems to community destruction.

Blizzard should do what they used to do: as servers die off or reach a point of no return, players are offered free transfer services to thriving servers of their choosing. When the server is on its death bed, any remaining characters are transplanted to a new server by automation if none was selected by the account holder who has gone AFK so nothing is truly lost.

Classic won't have 60+ servers like Vanilla did, so it should make the above process even easier as time goes on, and populations wane.

The most common complaint will be players having to choose a new character name from duplicates but let's be honest, that means very little in the grand scheme of things.

Doing it this way (which should have been the case with retail up until present day) allows communities to stay intact and in some sense grow while consolidating resources.

If I recall correctly, a max allocated pop server supported 6k players, high was 5k, medium 4k, and so on. Not every server was allocated to be a very/high pop.

As an example, should any server fall to the point where only 15% concurrent connections are occurring during peak time, it will begin the process of allowing existing players to transfer off to a healthier server.

[chronia]

I feel like they've fucked up their servers when they introduced all the sharding BS. Since BfA you can't even have city raids without massive lag.

Wasn't this always the case though, i mean i've had some nice Raid v.s Raid (close to 40 v.s. 40 or maybe even more) in BFa and not a lot of issues, however this was not in capital cities but just in the zones at a camp with a flight master or a CoA WQ for example.

Capital city raids, atleast on the servers i've played on always led to lag and quite a few times even server crashes (in Vanilla), the lag still happens in BFA, but atleast in my experience these have always been laggy on official servers, not only in BFA.

Totally against sharding - even for retail. Everyone realizes that sharding does have some benefits but has been one of, if not the most corrosive systems to community destruction.

Blizzard should do what they used to do: as servers die off or reach a point of no return, players are offered free transfer services to thriving servers of their choosing.

Did they ever do this? I can only remember they did the opposite, atleast in EU, where they opened up transfers from High / Full servers to low pop servers to bring down queue's on the high / full pops. I've never seen tranfers from low pop to "server of own choosing", only from High / Full to specific low pop servers. Sadly i've had to pay every time i transferred a toon from my old low pop server to the server i play on now.

Classic won't have 60+ servers like Vanilla did, so it should make the above process even easier as time goes on, and populations wane.

The most common complaint will be players having to choose a new character name from duplicates but let's be honest, that means very little in the grand scheme of things.

Doing it this way (which should have been the case with retail up until present day) allows communities to stay intact and in some sense grow while consolidating resources.

If classic won't have a lot of server it either means Classic failed to bring in a lot of players (which i don't think will happen) or that Blizzard is going to change stuff and allow "megaservers" and won't follow the Vanilla server cap. Which imho could lead to a lot of issues unless they rebalance the economy (droprates, spawnrates etc) as one of my main gripes on pservers is the impact of the non existing player cap on the game. It always feels very off compared to Vanilla.

[Donald Hellscream]

Slippery slopes are slippy.

Also, I was on a launch of a vanilla server with 14k players starting at once. Was great fun, would try again.

But having 14k on one server is not Vanilla either since they didn't have that many people on any given server.

[Nerovar]

Wasn't this always the case though, i mean i've had some nice Raid v.s Raid (close to 40 v.s. 40 or maybe even more) in BFa and not a lot of issues, however this was not in capital cities but just in the zones at a camp with a flight master or a CoA WQ for example.

Capital city raids, atleast on the servers i've played on always led to lag and quite a few times even server crashes (in Vanilla), the lag still happens in BFA, but atleast in my experience these have always been laggy on official servers, not only in BFA.

I've never had lag on large open PvP events during Cata, MoP or Wod.

[chronia]

I've never had lag on large open PvP events during Cata, MoP or Wod.

I'm not seeing lag either on those in BFA (but like i said, i haven't done Capital city raids). But for example 40 v.s. 40 at the horde camp in Nazmir near the turtle Q giver has never really been laggy for me and i've done that quite a few times.

But real Capital city raids like going with 2-3 raid groups to Oggrimar have always been laggy (or worse, crashing servers) for me, if this was Vanilla, TBC or Wrath (so i'm guessing that will lag in BFA also), End of Wrath i moved to a PVE server since wpvp was dead anyway, so Cata / WoD and Legion i don't really know, only in BFa i've been dabbling again with wpvp due to warmode.

[Deleted]

But having 14k on one server is not Vanilla either since they didn't have that many people on any given server.

I didn't say it was ideal or how it should be. Was just saying it wasn't a bad experience, there was no crashes and people were very driven to complete whatever goals they had set.

[evogsr]

Did they ever do this? I can only remember they did the opposite, atleast in EU, where they opened up transfers from High / Full servers to low pop servers to bring down queue's on the high / full pops. I've never seen tranfers from low pop to "server of own choosing", only from High / Full to specific low pop servers. Sadly i've had to pay every time i transferred a toon from my old low pop server to the server i play on now.

You are correct that it was from high to low. In the US, the players choosing was somewhat limited, but the choice was open to every new server that was created, so something like twenty options that was during Vanilla. In BC, there was a period of time where it was up to a players choosing if they were on a dead server, as was my case/guild going over to Tichondrius, which was thriving for alliance raiding & pvp and population at the time.

If classic won't have a lot of server it either means Classic failed to bring in a lot of players (which i don't think will happen) or that Blizzard is going to change stuff and allow "megaservers" and won't follow the Vanilla server cap. Which imho could lead to a lot of issues unless they rebalance the economy (droprates, spawnrates etc) as one of my main gripes on pservers is the impact of the non existing player cap on the game. It always feels very off compared to Vanilla.

Classic could very well see a huge influx of players, and it is in Blizzards best interest to plan for that. I think realistically after a few months servers will greatly thin out. The enthusiasm for Classic is strong from players who want to relive an experience like Vanilla on a Blizzard official server. I just don't see it maintaining a massive concurrent player base spanning all servers three to six months after release. Even though that's what I see realistically unfolding, I don't believe that means Classic will have necessarily failed.