You’ll have to form an orderly line if you want to play World of Warcraft Classic, because despite Blizzard once notoriously poo-pooing the idea that people wanted the old WoW, the servers for WoW Classic are ludicrously overbooked. The company have added new servers to hopefully spread the load.
When viewing servers to join, they encourage you to join those that have not been labelled as “Full”. Doing so will mean that you will be very likely to find yourself in a server queue.
In the last 24 hours, Blizzard have opened a whopping thirteen new servers.
| Name | Type | Timezone |
| Ashkandi | Normal | Eastern |
| Old Blanchy | Normal | Pacific |
| Westfall | Normal | Eastern |
| Bigglesworth | PvP | Pacific |
| Felstriker | PvP | AEST |
| Incendius | PvP | Eastern |
| Kirtonos | PvP | Eastern |
| Kromcrush | PvP | Eastern |
| Kurinnaxx | PvP | Pacific |
| Rattlegore | PvP | Pacific |
| Smolderweb | PvP | Pacific |
| Sulfuras | PvP | Eastern |
| Deviate Delight | RP-PvP | Eastern |
This brings the total to 29 servers, the details of which can be found here.
Blizzard warned that queues could pass 10,000 players and encouraged players to pre-register for their character names, but even with that, there’s reports of queues for individual servers well over 22,000, with hours long waits for those hoping to get in, and so Blizzard have been forced to add more server capacity.
While MMORPGs can exist with a single main server, dynamically shifting players between instances, that was not the case with WoW Classic, and it’s means that Blizzard have had to manage the situation. As explained last week, they’re adding new servers incrementally to try and fill up existing space and even the load across the various realms – for example, players on the Herod realm were encouraged to move to Stalagg as that opened up.
All of this is despite the theoretical server capacity now being much higher than it was in 2006. WoW Classic has effectively transposed the old gameplay and code base onto the modern server set up, and so Blizzard do have the actual ability to up the player count right here and now but, as with the opening of new realms, they’re not doing so in order to help the experience later down the line.
To recreate the original feel of the game, they’re rolling out the old content in six phases, and will turn off “layering” permanently befoore Phase 2 of the content unlock plan.
Blizzard explained, “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.”
Of course, none of that helps in the here and now. So grab yourself a cup of tea, get started on dinner or do some household chores to while away the time you’re waiting for some classic WoW.
