Overcrowded Realm Update - new US/EU realms announced!

when we turn off layering permanently before Phase 2 of our content unlock plan

BEFORE?!?!?! Ooooo!!!
which is why we’re cautiously opening new servers to meet demand

Saw this coming ahead of time, and I think it's smart on their part.

The only people surprised by this news is Blizzard themselves.
When did they so drastically lose touch?

The only people surprised by this news is Blizzard themselves.
When did they so drastically lose touch?

It's not blizzard's fault that people are being idiots and all piling onto Herod despite there being 3 other perfectly good East coast PvP realms. They should just randomly reassign half of all Herod characters to Stalagg.

There's been a similar update on the EU servers. Shazz in particular.

Based on name reservations so far, the Shazzrah realm is looking to be massively overpopulated. If all existing players on this server remain there, login queues in excess of 10,000 players are a certainty, and possibly much higher than that.

We recently opened up the Gehennas realm, and we urge players on Shazzrah to consider moving there. There are a lot of players currently on Shazzrah and we want Gehennas to fill up before we open any new PvP realms. This is so that player population is spread as evenly as possible before launch, in order to provide the best play experience.

While we are able to fit several times more players on a single realm in 2019 than was the case in 2006, we are not going to raise that cap any further, even though we have the technical capacity to do so. Raising realm caps would simply forestall the problem, letting more players in at launch but creating an unsustainable situation down the line, with severe queues when we turn off layering permanently before Phase 2 of our content unlock plan.

Please also note that our realm population estimates of Low, Medium, High, and Full are based on this increased capacity – a Medium realm today already has more characters on it than even the most crowded realms did back in 2006.

Our top priority in planning for WoW Classic’s launch has been ensuring that we are laying the groundwork for strong realm communities that will endure over the months and years to follow, which is why we’re cautiously opening new servers to meet demand.

Pure ridicolous thinking from Blizzard. Were they really thinking so few servers will be enough for a huge demand?!

"a Medium realm today already has more characters on it than even the most crowded realms did back in 2006."

Now that's one hell of a statement.

It's not blizzard's fault that people are being idiots and all piling onto Herod despite there being 3 other perfectly good East coast PvP realms. They should just randomly reassign half of all Herod characters to Stalagg.

Sure it is. The onus of population balance is not on the players shoulders. The servers should have soft caps on them so that this doesnt happen in the first place. Why can you continue to make characters on a full realm endlessly? Its dumb.

"a Medium realm today already has more characters on it than even the most crowded realms did back in 2006."

Now that's one hell of a statement.

Confirms some of the larger estimates that some of us have been making given some of the other indicators we saw during the beta and stress tests.

Guess it's time to change to Stalagg!

I was going to switch from Herod but I think ultimately I want to be on the realm with the highest population. Given Faerlina is streamer focused I'm happy to sit in queues for the first few weeks.

I was going to switch from Herod but I think ultimately I want to be on the realm with the highest population. Given Faerlina is streamer focused I'm happy to sit in queues for the first few weeks.

What if there's 10,000 people in front of you and it's a 10 hour queue?

I'm also curious why you want to be on a full realm with a 10k queue if sitting in that login queue results in being stuck on a layer the same size as it would be on any other lower population server that just has fewer layers.

Reminder that we're probably looking at a full Classic server being somewhere in the neighborhood of 40,000+ players with many layers. A full Vanilla server was around 3,000 players.

What if there's 10,000 people in front of you and it's a 10 hour queue?

I'm also curious why you want to be on a full realm with a 10k queue if sitting in that login queue results in being stuck on a layer the same size as it would be on any other lower population server that just has fewer layers.

Reminder that we're probably looking at a full Classic server being somewhere in the neighborhood of 40,000+ players with many layers. A full Vanilla server was around 3,000 players.

Really what I'm looking at it post Phase 1. I imagine the queues will be like any wow launch during the first few days and then it'll even out. Full disclosure though, if for whatever reason I'm wrong and come the weekend it's still unbearable hours long queues I do have a character reserved on Stalagg.

I just want to be where a lot of the active community is and everyone jumped to Herod. I know people are moving to Stalagg but I imagine a lot of people can't be bothered to move over. Ultimately we'll see what happens come 8/27 :)

I think the bigger point is these servers are so huge that even a medium sized one should collapse down to a single layer larger than the most crowded of Vanilla servers back in the original game. In addition to that, I still bet that the exact date when layering is shut off is probably going to be specific to the population decay of each server. So I'm thinking that a smaller server reaches that point before a maxed out full server does. These servers are all so huge that there shouldn't be any 'dead servers', and the smaller ones will probably feel fuller and sooner because they probably get squished to a single layer sooner.

the smaller ones will probably feel fuller and sooner because they probably get squished to a single layer sooner.

I was thinking this same thing. Layer collapse will probably be done on a per server basis. In the end, smaller servers may actually end up better off in the long run. Getting your server collapsed faster may actually draw more players over to it as they know there is no more layering on it. (Assuming the advertise this).

I also wouldn't be opposed to increasing the simultaneous cap per server, at least a little bit. I think post layering collapse, I would be OK with blizzard increasing the cap from 3500 (Assuming thats what it will be still) by 500 at a time until its deemed too populated. The reality is that post phase I a large number of people will be instanced a large amount of the time. (At least on PVE realms?) Nost showed us that 15k simultaneous players isn't the end of the world and it truly adds to the MMO feel, while not classic, these increased caps seem to acceptable to most vanilla players considering how little raging there was on PS's