Sharding, and how does it work?

PVP War Mode and World PvP
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Question is in the title. How does sharding work? are particular servers always in the same shard or are you being put in a random shard when you log in? Seems to me the far majority of shards i am in are alliance dominated. wasnt the whole point of sharding to straighten that out?

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War Mode normal zone shards are populated with players from normal realms in your region. RP WM zone shards are populated from RP realms in your region.

Reasons for faction imbalance in zone shard:

  • When you join a shard, the shard manager may be in progress populating it with more of the outnumbered faction.
  • Player distribution in a zone is variable. Even if shard is 50/50 faction balanced, you could be outnumbered or outnumberer in any subzone.
  • Large x shard groups can be quickly formed, and often camp bases for easy kills. PvP quests can motivate even ungrouped players to cluster.
  • Bosses will often have more of one faction because group finder.
  • On normal shards Horde may find themselves on single faction overflow shards. And on rp shards, Alliance can more often be on single faction overflow shards.
  • If you join a group, it could be composed of players from both rp and normal shards. The first player that entered the zone decides the shard. So, even if you are from a normal realm, you could be in an rp shard. While in the group, players are still members of their original shard, but are not visible on that shard. Leave group, return to original shard. Group disbands, all return. Even if you are solo, you may see the effect of x shard groups on faction balance.
  • Perception.

As you can see above, the shard manager is doing a difficult job. But in my experience balance is acceptable for Alliance on normal WM shards. It’s impossible for it to be 50/50 in every corner of a zone.

When I was on an rp realm at start of bfa, I was too often on single faction Alliance shards. Was frustrating, so I moved to normal realm. Big improvement.

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50-50 wouldnt be doable or even an desire. but far more then enough the nazjatar en mechagnome zones are 10-90. and that is a bit to much imho. But thanks for the clearity.

Small edit, talking about horde, since that is my main

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