the idea isnt too awful however imo here are the downsides.....free shards are run by people who still like playing themselves and dont like paying as do their consumers so why would they wish to pay a monthly fee to EA when they already dont wanna pay? what your suggesting if I understand correctly is each free shard would still be maintained by the owners but hosted by EA...hundreds of new shards which EA has to host while continuing to host their own seems like tons of space required to me tho im not technically savvy. if free shards become "legal" and endorsed why would anyone continue to pay? And last but not least the gloriousness of 250k+ players was because 250k+ players were all interacting with each other not on 100+ shards but on the original 20? or so!