"“shards” came about specifically because when we realized we would need to run multiple whole copies of Ultima Online for users to connect to, we needed to come up with a fiction for it"
"“shards” came about specifically because when we realized we would need to run multiple whole copies of Ultima Online for users to connect to, we needed to come up with a fiction for it"
"You’ll hear folks who worked on MMOs in the 90s use server and shard interchangeably — sometimes saying “shard” to reference a parallel server cluster rather than a physical server."
"So, did this database term come from a doc that I dashed off one afternoon in 1996? Umm… I am not sure. Seems like an interesting coincidence, if not. I wonder if I still have that doc…"