Farewell, sharding! On RP servers in WoW, the technology is almost entirely turned off.
Two days ago, we reported that one of the largest community events in World of Warcraft was canceled due to sharding technology. When too many players are in one zone, the server creates multiple “instances” (shards) of an area to distribute the load.
For the Tournament of the Ages, this meant that out of the hundreds of players, a maximum of forty could see each other at the same time – a big problem.
But Blizzard reacted quickly and implemented a hotfix yesterday (08.08.2017) that disabled sharding technology for Northrend on RP servers. Shortly thereafter, role-players reported: Yes, it works, the event can take place!
Sharding in WoW on role-playing servers disabled
Now Blizzard has explained in a long post that sharding technology will be almost completely disabled on role-playing servers. The reason is that player-organized events occur much more frequently on RP realms.
It is acceptable here if the server’s performance dips a bit – also because a little lag in role-playing is usually not a problem.
However, there are still some places where sharding is still going strong:
- Dalaran over the Broken Isles
- All zones of the Broken Isles
- The upcoming area Argus
- Busy zones due to WoW events (micro-holidays, etc.)
The aim is to disable sharding in all areas that are not critically relevant to gameplay. This includes all “old” areas – from Classic to Warlords of Draenor. When Legion eventually becomes “outdated”, it will also be disabled there and will only be active in the new areas.
What do you think of this special treatment for RP realms regarding sharding? Should it be like this on all servers again? Or is it good that it only happens on the role-playing realms?
Have you seen the doomsayers in WoW? They are back in Dalaran!
