One World of Warcraft Classic realm has proven so popular in the lead up to the game’s launch later this month that Blizzard estimates it will have a wait queue of 10,000 players or more.
Later this month, Blizzard will finally open World of Warcraft Classic to fans who want to go back to the game’s roots and experience it like they did in 2006. For many players, that means convening on the same server as their friends in order to play together. For one server in particular, that might prove a little difficult.
Recently, Blizzard released a tool that allows World of Warcraft Classic players reserve the name they want to use for their upcoming character. Players did just that, and apparently many of them all flocked to the same realm: Herod. This prompted the community manager to post on Battle.net urging players to spread out to other servers, saying that, "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."
A server queue this high would mean incredibly long wait times for players to get in and start playing the game. Blizzard has begun encouraging players to move over to Stalogg instead. The company recently opened that realm, and would prefer it fill up before they open even more. They hope to spread out the player count as much as possible before launch.
According to Eurogamer, players discussed the reasoning behind Herod’s surge in popularity in a recent Battle.net thread. User Human Paladin Blom explained that the realm has no streamers, runs on eastern time, and has a community that looks forward to WoW Classic PVP, all of which make the realm more desirable for fans.
Surely the idea of long wait times should encourage folks to move. No one should want to wait in line in WoW in 2019. However, while some fans have no issues making the jump, many fans would rather stay put. Perhaps they prefer their classic WoW experience to include early MMO era server wait times.
Those fans can rest assured their patience will be tested. Blizzard has said it has no intention to raise the cap for the number of people who can get on the server, even though they have the ability to do it. Apparently, it will cause too many problems down the line to have so many players in the server.
It seems like, regardless of what happens, Herod will remain popular. Fans who refuse to budge will have a tough decision to make when waiting in long queues at the end of the month. In the meantime, players can use the World of Warcraft Classic friend finder tool to find their old WoW buddies and discuss using a different server.
World of Warcraft Classic releases August 27, 2019 on PC. World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth is available now on PC.
Source: Eurogamer