Sharding, phasing and layering,
what are they ?
You know when you get into a group from a different server and all the players around you change?
That’s your answer.
lols playing rp server dont have any sharding, phasing and layering.
it ruens open world pvp so playing on RP is only alternative 
Sharding
Sharding is something that happens in retail to stop the servers overloading. So if there are too many people in a particular zone they can divide them up, into different version of that same zone.
It’s also for WM on and off, so that people can choose whether they want to be in a PvP enabled version of the world or a PvE environment where the opposite faction isn’t hostile (unless you enter or get to close to one of their bases).
Sharding allows people to be stuck in the same area regardless of what realm they are from. So the world, theoretically always feels populated. It’s a cross realm zone effectively.
RP realms are kind of exempt, you can be invited into RP realms by players on them but they aren’t grouped with any others (unless they are connected realms).
Phasing
Phasing is where the world changes depending on what stage of a questline/storyline you are on. We also have different time phases from some zones. Like for example in the current storyline Teldrassil is destroyed but you can talk to Zidormi and go back to an older phase of the world where Teldrassil is still alive and well.
Another example is when a storyline changes the world around you. So someone who hasn’t completed a quest line wont see the world the same way as you do and you wont be able to see each other.
Layering
This is specific to Classic. It’s a method used to balance realms at busy times. Like Classic launches so more people can be connected and play at once. It is usually phased out over time or heavily reduced.
For TBC launch I think I was in layer 19 and our Dark Portal bugged and wouldn’t let anyone in, we had to get invited to other layers to get in 
Over the first month, the layers dropped to five or less, and eventually they are just removed and the population is what you see around you.
Layering is realm specific and you wont see people from other realms.
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Sharding is why us players on lowly populated normal realms don’t get to have an easier time farming rares and legacy world bosses. 
Sharding is where they take players from an highly populated server and add them to players on an under-populated server to maintain a balance of player numbers.
A Shard is a bit like a temporary Virtual Server.
Phasing is where the part of the world you are in has different phases of its existence when it changes due to some reason over time. This could be due to questing, so when you arrive at a town it is empty but when you do some quests you rescue NPCs and then the town is populated. If two players go to that town (one with the quest complete and one never having done it) they will see different towns.
I don’t know what layering is.
it is fun to pvp when u run afther a player ur about to kill him and he enter a zone and he layer out toa other layer and u cant kill him
some peoples abjuse server hop addon to swamp layers to a other server so peoples cant kill them when they about to luuse a fight …
Sharding it is also used to split players from over-populated realms. If there are too many players of a realm on the shard of a zone from that realm the servers will create a shard of that zone on another server and split players from that realm between both shards. Shards it is used to join and split. People usually forgot about the first part because 99% of the time it is not needed to split, but during major patches and expansion launches, it is normal for over-populated realms to be split among multiple shards of the new zones.
Layering is the implementation of sharding used in Classic. It is basically sharding with limitations. The limitation of layering it is only used to split players in over-populated realms and never join players of different realms and it has a bigger scope. While Retail shards usually have the size of a zone Classic Layers have the minimum size of a Continent. It also has some restrictions to avoid players switching layers too fast.
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