Interesting, thanks. Wonder if it was a coincidence that UO adopted that terminology, or if somebody there knew about this.

It's a good question. I mean, it's not entirely out of the question that the UO folks independently developed the same term without being aware of the SHARD research. But OTOH, it's entirely possible they were aware. Without talking to somebody that was there, I doubt we'll ever know for sure.

Raph Koster claims parallel invention of the term "shard" for separate worlds in MMOs. https://www.raphkoster.com/2009/01/08/database-sharding-came...