Shard

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

• Shard also called sherd or potsherd, is a term for broken pieces of pottery or glass, often used in archaeology. In contemporary use, it often implies a sharp fragment, especially of glass.

• A shard is an instance of a world, realm, or playground in some massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) or in a multiplayer computer role-playing game-style server. In MMOGs, the term shard is often associated with Ultima Online, Neverwinter Nights, and Silkroad Online; other MMOGs call them servers or Realms (World of Warcraft) instead, although their function is still basically the same. The usage originated with the Ultima Online story, where each of the game's servers were said to be different images of the world, trapped in the shattered shards of a mystic gem. Five games known for using unsharded servers are Mankind (MMORTS), EVE Online, PlanetSide, A Tale in the Desert and Entropia Universe where there is no sharding or instancing and everything happens in the same persistent online world. Also Second Life which is a user-content generated world uses servers called "sims" seamlessly connected to each other in a "grid" to create one persistent world.

• Shard is a fictional character in the Marvel Comics universe. She is the sister of the Bishop

• The Shard London Bridge is a skyscraper being constructed in London, and destined to be the tallest building in Britain.

• In zoology, a shard is a tough scale, sheath, or shell; it is especially used as a term to refer to the elytra of a beetle.

• SHARD is an acronym for South Hams Against Rural Destruction, a local environmental action group from South Hams, Devon, United Kingdom, active since approximately 1998.