I know MA are stating the single shard element to the new EU, but generating all the planets, all those mining area expanses with no mobs you can go to and be alone for hours... what level of detail do we think we are going to get exactly for all of this? At the moment we get to download or ignore entire planets, but how many GB of data will even one current server be in the future? Will some of us even on 100 GB volumes a month be saying "Hold on MA - I can't download Twin Peaks this month please! I'll get that tp next month..."
Then there's the on-the-fly loading in of what is going to be rendered once we actually have it on our SSDs. If we are going to be chasing each other in vehicles, or even just running from mobs, then terrains will have to be the same for everybody, not more bumpy and slower for some than others on "keep it flat" mode.
This is not going to be a showcase of graphics, it's going to be an interactive game environment. For the love of the flying spaghetti monster, please give predictive pvp motion with latency-catch-up half a chance of not glitching all the time. Remember when fancy clothing could be used to lag out your enemy that had to spend time loading you in a fit of "What are you wearing?" computation? That's going to be fun on steroids if people start abusing user-generated stuff on top of everything else...
I really don't want to hear "It is for this reason that we have decided to set xyz minimums on hardware requirements!" By all means have regions some people can't enter (or instances where performance choices can be made) - but hopefully not really useful set areas such as Celeste Quarry on Ark or wherever.
Actually, I'd prefer a multi-shard approach for non-instances too if the single shard is not designed in such a way as to cater for differing mesh preferences. Yeah, I know... avoid pirates by playing in a different shard... as opposed to choosing the shard of "logoff to RL" that we currently have ... (irony mode)
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Oh I hope MA don't completely balls all of this up. Oh, are bristlehogs tameable again now, or still bugged and no fix in sight? You know, simple stuff that gets broken, like our own planet with real hoomanz on it... Just asking in irony mode again - soz!