Poll: Shards?

[DoucLangur]

I see you put some effort into a constructive suggestion. However I do see a couple of flaws here - especially because it would still mean that people on the same chart with hardcore guild xy could not ever get into the high end zones.

What I used to wish they would create back during EQlive progression times:
A cluster of servers Vanilla only - Kunark only - Velious only - Luclin only - etc., which would allow movelogs into the direction of newer expansions ONLY.

I.e. once raidguild001 wants to do Kunark, they would have to /movelog and leave the Vanilla server to the rest of the players who e.g. didn't yet get to kill Innoruuk/Cazic Thule, etc.

They can still kill the same old world mobs on their new Kunark server, but without influencing the Vanilla server economy.

Then when people wanna do Velious, they have to turn their back on the Kunark server, giving more and more players a shot at Veeshan's Peak.

While this may have been a good idea for Progression servers, I do not see this as an option for P1999, because we don't have enough players, I'm afraid...

Still - back then it would have given many casual players a chance to see content otherwise blocked by hardcore players.

[Noselacri]

ITT: people who fail at reading comprehension and/or intentionally misinterpret things so they can sound like they have a counterargument.

[Flamewraith]

Sounds almost like instancing to me.

[Pudge]

Originally Posted by Splorf22 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

So Noselacri made a post that I really like where he makes two good points. First, the problem with P1999 is too many damn players. The players cannot manage the server ala Sirken because the only thing they can do to fix the problem is try to grief other people off - which is exactly what has happened on numerous occasions. Second, he proposes a solution that I have not heard suggested before called shards which I think is the best solution I have heard yet.

The basic idea is to split the server into multiple servers and allow /movelog, but only the high-end zones. Each guild can only exist on one shard. If you are in a global zone (all the low/mid level zones like Qeynos or East Commonlands or Mistmoore) you could find players of all guilds leveling up together and wearing and trading gear obtained in any of the various shards. However, whenever you zone into one of the sharded zones (zones like Sebilis or Sky) the server checks your shard flag and moves you to the appropriate copy, exactly as if you were playing on a separate server.

The key point here is that this is not instances. They aren't created on demand. You'll share your high-level shard zones with several hundred other players and all of the usual negotiation and sharing and global world nature of EQ will apply. Let's say for argument's sake that we make three shards which I shall call A, B, and C, and after a month or two we end up with Shard A: TMO, Azure Guard, Europa, Shard B: FE, Taken, The A-Team, BDA, Shard C: Full Circle, IB, Divinity, Rapture. Well to me that looks a lot like a classic EQ server: each shard has 3-4 high-level guilds who can and will engage in the competition that the staff loves so much. The key difference is that the staff actually can just turn off variance and say "you handle it" because with a reasonable number of players per shard the players don't have to fight like dogs for one or two spawns.

Anyway I seriously doubt this system would ever be implemented because it would be quite a bit of work to do (certainly far more than the simulated patch days) but I like it because I think it cuts right to the heart of the problem.

Roll on red. Problem solved

[Handull]

It'll be really fun looking for ports around Kunark when DL, KC, EJ, and Seb are all sharded. Sorry, don't think this would be helpful.

[Faulken]

Bad idea!