Players on Moon Guard have long hosted a week-long tournament event for all World of Warcraft roleplayers called the Tournament of Ages. It’s filled with races, jousts, card battles, D20 battles, and all of the things you’d expect from the phrase “week-long roleplaying tournament.” The problem is that it’s also filled with players, and given the phasing shard technology that Blizzard’s servers have been using for some time, that’s the game’s cue to split people off into small groups so that everyone has equal access to a zone. A fine theory for current expansion content, but less fine when players are trying to host a large-scale RP event.
Surprising everyone within World of Warcraft’s beleaguered RP community, the developers pushed forward a hotfix to disable sharding in Northrend for RP realms, thereby saving Christmas the community’s ability to hold and enjoy this tournament. It’s a nice push to allow players to enjoy some time together for something other than progression content, so one may wonder if similar changes are coming to more of the game beyond the areas where sharding is vital to handle expansion launches.
