World Of Warcraft Devs Confirm Herod Realm Massive Overcrowding Is A Real Concern

On Friday a Community manager for Blizzard made an announcement that fans looking forward to playing World of Warcraft Classic won't want to hear. The community manager warned that based on name reservations so far, the Herod realm is shaping up to be massively overpopulated. The manager said that if all existing players on that server remain there, there will be queues in excess of 10,000 people.

The hope is that some of the people who are registered on the Herod realm will move to different realms and ease the overpopulation on the Herod server. The community manager noted that Blizzard recently opened the Stalag realm and it is urging many players registered on the Herod server to move there. Blizzard says that it wants the Stalag realm to fill up before it opens any new PvP realms.

It is taking these steps to that the player population is spread evenly as possible before the game launches, which should provide the best play experience. Blizzard noted that while it could fit "several times more players" on a single realm now than they were in 2006, the cap for the Herod realm won't be raised any further. Adding more players at launch would only create an unstable situation down the line.

The community manager also noted that the realm population estimates of Low, Medium, High, and Full are based on the increased capacity available today. A server with a medium rating today has more characters than the most crowded realms did in 2006.

Blizzard notes that the top priority for WoW Classic's launch is to ensure that it is laying the groundwork for strong realm communities to endure for the months and years to come. It is "cautiously" opening new servers to meet demand. Blizzard announced WoW Classic in May.