I guess I don't understand posts like this. So what if people got to 60 faster than you? Is there some sort of prize for doing so? It somehow ruins the game completely? Report the exploitable Foundry stuff and move on. People rush to max level using this kind of garbage then sit around complaining there's nothing to do.…
The term shard comes from Ultima Online. The story goes; the world was shattered into pieces (servers) or shards by the main bad dude. I'm not sure why they use it in reference to servers in Neverwinter. I guess it's part of the MMO lexicon now without anyone really knowing why. (e.g. mob)