Hmm I have to say I don't approve of that :( And canon names being allowed is even worse... I hope they reconsider this approach! Although they would have to force a lot of character renames which wouldn't go down very well with a lot of people. I guess we'll have to wait and see how things play out.
Agreed. Each shard, of course, represents multiple physical servers running concurrently. It's amusing to think that anyone can imagine a large MMO running in a small back room with three servers in it ;)
He meant a 'single account' can have characters of the same name. If they allowed to different accounts to share the same character names that would be a terribly confusing ordeal. However, even having duplicate names on a single account isn't a good idea IMO. It doesn't make sense, at the very least, from a role playing…
Arrgh queued for about 2 hours, finally got in for my first taste of Neverwinter with 30mins before maintenance started :( Thoroughly enjoyable 30mins though! Hopefully I won't have another 2 hour queue to get in once the shards come back online.