World of Warcraft Classic Gets More Servers

28th Nov, 2022

Blizzard's long-awaited World of Warcraft Classic will finally launch on Tuesday, August 27. The excitement has been high for the launch. So much so that Blizzard warned players last week that there was a queue of up to 10,000 people waiting on one server. It is staggering how many people are returning to the Classic game. Blizzard has opened additional realms to combat this trend.

Last week character name reservations were opened. However, the limit on the number of characters you can roll was lifted on Monday. This will allow up to 10 characters per Classic Realm. Blizzard has brought more servers online to World of Warcraft. These server instances are called "Realms" in old UO parlance. On Tuesday, Incendius (PvP Eastern), Bigglesworth, Old Blanchy, Pacific (Normal), and Westfall (Normal), will all be available.

WoW servers hold far more players now than ever before -- Blizzard stated that a modern realm with an 'Medium' population has more people than the most crowded server back when Classic ran. This will make it extremely difficult to manage starting areas at launch and may also make the early period quite crowded. World of Warcraft's Classic world feels large and empty today. You don't necessarily meet many people while leveling a character. Poor Mankrik will be besieged tomorrow, even though Blizzard uses layering to shift population into other areas and ensure adequate spawns. It will be fascinating to see how it all plays out.

Blizzard is being cautious about the whole situation. Kaivax, the community manager, has sent messages to address the risk of realm overload.

We have been careful to open new servers to meet the demand.

The company doesn't want its empire to be in a position where it has to close realms and force realm mergers within a few months to maintain population growth.

I am particularly interested to see if Blizzard will adjust spawn rates or make other subtle changes to address population concerns. Although the company was reluctant to set high mob spawn rates in the past, it was not uncommon for Blizzard temporarily to adjust spawn rates to address overpopulation. Although WoW Classic is designed to replicate the original game, Classic WoW was able to adapt to the needs of its players. The evolution of the new servers will be similar to that of the old ones.