Classic servers are now live, and as expected, players are crowding to get in. Unfortunately, servers are still pretty packed leading to long queues for some of the more popular servers. World of Warcraft director has now issued some clarification on Blizzard’s plans to alleviate the long queues in the near future.In a post on the Blizzard forums (via USG), WoW director Ion Hazzikostas was asked why Blizzard is hesitating on opening up new servers when queues to enter World of Warcraft classic can grow into the tens of thousands. The reason, Hazzikostas says, is because Blizzard is prioritizing the long-term health of World of Warcraft Classic over quick fixes.
“[W]e’ve tried to prioritize the long-term health of our realm communities, recognizing that if we undershot the mark in terms of launch servers, we could move quickly to add additional realms in the opening hours,” Hazzikostas writes. “But if we went out with too many servers, weeks or months down the line we’d have a much tougher problem to solve.”
Hazzikostas says that there are certain tools, like free character transfers, that can be utilized in the long-term for underpopulated servers but calls the process “tremendously disruptive” and something Blizzard wants to avoid.
Since launch, Blizzard has released over 20 new realms, and the developers are continuing to monitor world health to jump in and open new realms if necessary. But Hazzikostas says the team still waits for a realm to fill before opening a new one because the main priority is a healthy population for the long term.
Hazzikostas also addressed some confusion over the queue sizes for some servers. Designations like “High, Medium, and Low” are determine dynamically, so even servers with queues of around 4k-5k will still be labeled “Medium” in comparison to even more populated queues.
Blizzard is working to change the logic to be more intuitive. So, a server with a queue will be labeled “full” which should make it clearer for players looking to avoid a long wait.
Excitement for World of Warcraft Classic is high. On Twitch, WoW Classic streams broke one million viewers, and some servers are so full that players are politely lining up for quest items.
However, in an interview with Forbes, Hazzikostas says Blizzard is predicting steep drops offs from players who are only playing on Classic servers out of curiosity. And that’s why long-term population health is so important to manage, and why Blizzard isn’t just opening up servers whenever it needs to.
Check out our World of Warcraft Classic wiki for more guides, or our server tracker to see how the queues are looking. Also check out our World of Warcraft Classic preview ahead of a review.
Matt Kim is a reporter for IGN. You can reach him on Twitter.
