Champions Online has no server shards

Reader Comments (3)

This is great news. Going the way of a DDO or EVE or GW is a good thing. This crap with being locked into a single server, like WoW or WAR or any number of other MMO's, is just annoying. I want to be able to play with any one who happens to own the game, not just those on my selected realm.

Then with shards you end up with problems like WoW and WAR have, where you'll have dead servers, or extreme population imbalances. No one wants to be on a server where 80% is the opposite faction. (although may not apply to Champions)

This is just good news, in my opinion. Hopefully though they won't separate Europe from the North America, because that is another level of frustration.

EVE Online is the way to go, all MMO's should do that. (Looking at you Warhammer Online, you failed)

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@ScytheNoire

This differs from EVE in a couple of really important points: one, unique character names that are immersive. Two, there isn't any instancing.

Sure, EVE may have a single gaming shard. But if you go to a particular system, anyone else going there will go to the same system as you, not a separate instance. EVE is a single, uninstanced universe.

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This is nothing like EVE's server model. It's more like Runescape. The argument over whether there are instances or shards is really just a technical one. The bottom line is that they're coping with the server load by splitting people over many copies of the same game areas, each run as a separate server process.

In modern terms, we call something a shard if it's a completely separate persistent universe, with no crossover to other servers apart from infrequent, arranged character transfers. Since there's no crossover, two people on different shards can have the same name or one group on a shard could own a certain castle while another group owns it on another shard, for example. We call something an instance if there is a high potential for crossover. That is, if a player can move their character from one instance to another through normal game means.

In that sense, Runescape's servers aren't actually shards but are instances of the same persistent game universe. By announcing that Champions Online will have no shards, they're just saying it will work the same way. Rather than having 20 universes, each with their own server populations, they can have one universe with 20 instances of each zone.

What this server model is good for is that it lets any player play with any other player. If you find out a friend of yours plays the game, you are guaranteed to be able to play with them. It will also homogenise the economy across the game (in WoW terms it would be like having a single shared auctionhouse for all servers). It's actually a really good idea that other companies should take notice of. It will have some impact on areas of gameplay like PvP, but I doubt that'll be an issue for a game like Champions Online.

But don't mistake this for a single-server approach like the way EVE Online does things, there's still massive instancing involved.

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