Shardy

Shardy refers to a term often used in the context of video games, particularly online multiplayer games. It typically describes a server or instance of a game that is a copy or duplicate of another, serving a specific group of players. This is done to prevent the game world from becoming overcrowded and to ensure a smoother gameplay experience for everyone. When a game world reaches a certain player capacity on a single server, new players may be directed to a "shardy" version of that world, which is essentially a parallel instance of the same environment.

The concept of sharding is a form of instancing, a common technique in MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games) and other online games. Sharding allows developers to distribute the player base across multiple servers, even if those servers represent the same in-game location. This distribution helps to alleviate performance issues such as lag and frame rate drops that can occur when too many players are in the same area. Players in different shards of the same game world generally cannot see or interact with each other, though some games may have mechanisms for cross-shard communication or merging under specific circumstances. The term "shardy" itself is a colloquialism derived from "shard," meaning a piece or fragment.