Should Vanilla have sharding tech?

[Deleted]

Hell no.

If there is a queue for some quest or mob because too many players want to kill it, not having sharding means players will form groups, start talking to each other. This is what vanilla was all about - social interaction and creating communities.

Sharding is anti-community shit that should not exist in Classic.

If you want other players to not bother you, play BfA. Single player with NPC-like players running around to create illusion of world, chat interface to spam memes and some anonymous automatically matched instances.

For demo it makes sense though. Its for testing, not for making communities.

[Tinytalon]

No. If you want classic, then have it the way it was. No quality of life that wasn't back then.

[Deleted]

Sometimes developers have to make unpopular decisions for the better of the gameplay experience. This is one of those times.

It isn't.

Better game play is entirely subjective. For some "better" means completing quests as fast as possible - that's BfA crowd. For others "better" means having fun with other players and forming communities - that's Classic crowd.

Any feature that splits realm community should not be in Classic. That includes sharding.

[Altariaz]

Definitely no sharding. Definitely no phasing. These technologies undermine the sense of community.

[Torrasque]

"Warts and all."

[Marani]

IMO sharding for launch is fine. I'd rather let them have a few shards at the start that they disable once things calm down a bit. Because what are the alternatives? Hour long queues? Or a few dozen servers at the start but three quarters of them are almost empty after the initial rush? Instead of adding 4 times the amount of servers and then closing down 3 out of 4 after a month or having them be dead weight, I think having fewer servers but then 2-3 shards per server at the start would be better.

But I still hope the shards will be MUCH bigger than on live and they disable sharding as soon as possible.

[HuxNeva]

Who are these players you speak of? All of the classic fans i know are against sharding, and are fully willing to wait in a queue so we get as close to a legitimate vanilla experience as possible.

How long a queue? You realize that instead of a steady inflow of players over the first 9 months (people even had to go to a store to buy a physical disk), you now are looking at the same number of players on launch night? The number of players you can let into a zone is still pretty small as the interactions rise exponentially with the number of people in the zone. A 'modern' realm might have 500.000 registered characters, but you can still crash a non sharded zone with just a few hundred players. So a sensible governor is used to stabilize the flow. Are you satisfied with a 'you are number 12.325 in the queue. estimated wait time 4d 15h'?

Again when having these conversations you need to take into consideration, who is classic being made for?

Sweet summer child, if you think it is the handful of rabid 'Vanilla means Vanilla' mouth foaming forum dwellers, you are sadly mistaken.

- - - Updated - - -

But I still hope the shards will be MUCH bigger than on live and they disable sharding as soon as possible.

They can't be bigger than on live because those are technical limitations.

[Asrialol]

Think about what you just said for a second.

You are suggesting blizzard caters to the people who never played vanilla and likely wont stick around.

Classic is going to have extremely low operating costs once its up and running, its just as much a PR move as it is financially motivated.

How much is the operating costs? Rough estimate per month?

[GrinnersGrin]

Dynamic respawn would be the forgivable alternative at launch.

Imo Sharding just ruins the sense of community too much and will probably break too many people's immersive nostalgia trip

[Alkizon]

When our 2 (any number) raids come to burn Stormwind I must be sure that I will see:
1) all raids in one place (each participant) and interact with them;
2) all possible city's defenders for I'll want, that they could deliver us worthy push back.
...and now imagine that we're scattered around the shards.

My attitude to shards and other elements destroying server integrity won't ever change (same for retail) = Just NO.

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

The load on a shard goes up exponentially with the number of characters in a shard, because it is based on interactions. So even if you trow 'more' or 'better' resources at it, it makes little difference near your capacity point.

If I understand everything correctly, server's workload doesn't change at all, since this is still the same number of people. Only performance speed for specific players changes. Ie they don't defend their servers with shards' technology at all. Correct me if I'm wrong. Players don't need shards to play (given performance of modern systems), it's not clear for whom they try so hard at all then.

̶I̶f̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶i̶r̶ ̶t̶e̶c̶h̶n̶o̶l̶o̶g̶y̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶a̶b̶l̶e̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶m̶a̶n̶i̶p̶u̶l̶a̶t̶e̶ ̶o̶n̶l̶y̶ ̶s̶h̶a̶r̶d̶s̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶w̶o̶r̶k̶l̶o̶a̶d̶'̶s̶ ̶d̶i̶s̶t̶r̶i̶b̶u̶t̶i̶o̶n̶,̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶n̶ ̶w̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶p̶r̶e̶v̶e̶n̶t̶s̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶m̶ ̶f̶r̶o̶m̶ ̶p̶l̶a̶y̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶s̶a̶m̶e̶ ̶s̶i̶t̶u̶a̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶w̶i̶t̶h̶o̶u̶t̶ ̶s̶h̶a̶r̶d̶s̶ ̶(̶t̶h̶e̶r̶e̶ ̶w̶i̶l̶l̶ ̶b̶e̶ ̶c̶o̶n̶d̶i̶t̶i̶o̶n̶a̶l̶ ̶d̶i̶v̶i̶s̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶(̶p̶a̶r̶a̶l̶l̶e̶l̶/̶m̶u̶l̶t̶i̶t̶h̶r̶e̶a̶d̶e̶d̶ ̶i̶n̶f̶o̶r̶m̶a̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶d̶i̶s̶t̶r̶i̶b̶u̶t̶i̶o̶n̶)̶,̶ ̶b̶u̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶y̶ ̶w̶i̶l̶l̶ ̶a̶l̶l̶ ̶b̶e̶ ̶d̶i̶s̶p̶l̶a̶y̶e̶d̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶i̶n̶t̶e̶r̶a̶c̶t̶ ̶t̶o̶g̶e̶t̶h̶e̶r̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶o̶n̶e̶ ̶w̶o̶r̶l̶d̶ ̶(̶h̶a̶v̶e̶ ̶s̶a̶m̶e̶ ̶i̶n̶f̶o̶r̶m̶a̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶d̶i̶s̶t̶r̶i̶b̶u̶t̶e̶d̶)̶,̶ ̶i̶.̶e̶.̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶r̶e̶ ̶w̶i̶l̶l̶ ̶b̶e̶ ̶s̶h̶a̶r̶d̶s̶,̶ ̶b̶u̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶w̶i̶l̶l̶ ̶b̶e̶ ̶o̶n̶l̶y̶ ̶a̶ ̶s̶y̶m̶b̶o̶l̶i̶c̶ ̶i̶m̶p̶e̶r̶c̶e̶p̶t̶i̶b̶l̶e̶ ̶d̶i̶v̶i̶s̶i̶o̶n̶,̶ ̶i̶t̶'̶l̶l̶ ̶b̶e̶ ̶s̶y̶s̶t̶e̶m̶'̶s̶,̶ ̶b̶u̶t̶ ̶n̶o̶t̶ ̶"̶g̶a̶m̶e̶'̶s̶"̶ ̶p̶a̶r̶a̶m̶e̶t̶e̶r̶)̶

Never mind.

<<BACK|FORWARD>>

[Marani]

They can't be bigger than on live because those are technical limitations.

I'm not entirely sure. I mean there are obviously limits to performance. We sometimes have some sharding problems here and there with overloaded shards, when there were too many people in one shard and they wouldn't get phased out again and it would be super laggy. Of course in that case it was buggy. But it shows in principle that you can take more people, but it will cause lag. The challenge will be to find the sweet spot. I just kinda hope that with classic spells having way less interactions and effects overall, this sweet spot might shift a bit into the direction of bigger shards. (E.g. look at how many extra effects your artifact added to each of your spells that have to be communicated somehow. you don't have something like that on classic servers) But that's something they'll have to test out eventually.

[HordeFanboy]

If they keep sharding no one will play

[HuxNeva]

I'm not entirely sure. I mean there are obviously limits to performance. We sometimes have some sharding problems here and there with overloaded shards, when there were too many people in one shard and they wouldn't get phased out again and it would be super laggy. Of course in that case it was buggy. But it shows in principle that you can take more people, but it will cause lag. The challenge will be to find the sweet spot. I just kinda hope that with classic spells having way less interactions and effects overall, this sweet spot might shift a bit into the direction of bigger shards. (E.g. look at how many extra effects your artifact added to each of your spells that have to be communicated somehow. you don't have something like that on classic servers) But that's something they'll have to test out eventually.

The load on a shard goes up exponentially with the number of characters in a shard, because it is based on interactions. So even if you trow 'more' or 'better' resources at it, it makes little difference near your capacity point.

[Deleted]

Holy Mother!

How the flying F, did blizzard decide to recreate vanilla AND IMPLEMENT SHARDING!? tards ruin everything they touch. Sharding is core to making an mmorpg a mmorpg.

[Deleted]

Maybe they could make it a optional setting to allow sharding

[HuxNeva]

I'm not entirely sure. I mean there are obviously limits to performance. We sometimes have some sharding problems here and there with overloaded shards, when there were too many people in one shard and they wouldn't get phased out again and it would be super laggy. Of course in that case it was buggy. But it shows in principle that you can take more people, but it will cause lag. The challenge will be to find the sweet spot. I just kinda hope that with classic spells having way less interactions and effects overall, this sweet spot might shift a bit into the direction of bigger shards. (E.g. look at how many extra effects your artifact added to each of your spells that have to be communicated somehow. you don't have something like that on classic servers) But that's something they'll have to test out eventually.

Let me try to be more precise.

First of all I do no know how the Blizzard server is implemented. Typically there are very, very many heuristic optimizations which make tadeoffs between precision and performance etc.

However, underlying, there are some things that don't change.

The problem with having many players in close proximity, is that each player's actions can have effects on all those around them. The potential for interaction goes up by n(n − 1)/2 where n is the number of players near each other.

So let's say your system can support 100 players near each other. This means you are handling those 4950 potential interactions in time so that they do not affect the frequency your server is set to update the world (say 10 times pr second). Unfortunately, to support 200 players you do not need just double the hardware performance, as the potentials interactions don't just double, but are now 19900, just over 4x what they were before.

Now there is two things you can do:

Time dilution (this is what Eve does): You grant yourself more time to still do the calculations and send out all the updates to those that need them. The advantage is you didn't sacrifice precision. The game still is as accurate as before, but 1 second of 'world time' is now going to take 4 seconds in real time.

Dropping the world update calculation frequency: Instead of recalculating 10 times per second, you are just going to re-calculations less time per second, e.g. 2,5 times a second. The problem is that the lower your update frequency, the more 'guessing' you are going to have to do of what is actually happening in between, and how that affected things. Typically you will start seeing characters running though walls, falling through the world, not registering interactions, skipping and ghosting all over the place, health and mana bars of opponents seemingly jumping at random etc etc.

For 'turn based' games time dilution is a good solution. Players take turns, and a turn is now just going to take longer, but the essence of the game does not change.
For games with a 'real time' component, where the reflexes and reactions of the player are essential, time dilution ruins the game, and all you can do is frequency reduction until the game becomes 'unplayable'.

(P.S. The clever reader might have already remarked that there is a continuum from 'turn based' to 'realtime'. Indeed, if you reduce the actions per minute far enough, a 'real-time' game can basically be reduced to a turn based game where players play their 'turn' in parallel. For WoW, if everything were on the GCD, and the GCD was long enough, it could alleviate your server load for high population density areas considerably ;-) )

[Tomana]

Yes, at launch. When only a handful of people will remain on each server after a couple of weeks, sharding can be safely disabled

[Deleted]

It worked out the first time around. Servers are even better now.

Yeah, to bad that instead of around 200k at launch we will now have millions!

[Bloodletters]

It's a very delicate situation. I joined a brand new server during vanilla about 1 month before TBC was released and fighting over resources, especially in the opening areas was especially difficult. So I can support sharding IF and only if it's used in the early, early game but beyond that you just deal with some occasional issues tagging mobs, it will be okay. I expect that they will have a lot of issues when they are first released because millions of people will want to play. They really need to be careful that they do not encroach on something that is core to the identity of vanilla WoW though by fragmenting the world.

[Amaterasu65]

The servers are a handful right? Doubt it's needed.