Ben Gibson 
After last week’s forum posts from a Blizzard Community Manager informing players of the realm population issues affecting certain servers, updates were posted on Wednesday that re-iterated the need for players to move realms to avoid causing long server queues.
The initial posts noted that the realms Herod (US PVP) and Shazzrah (EU PVP) were looking to be “massively overpopulated” with “login queues in excess of 10,000 players” being noted as a certainty. A new PVP realm was opened up in reach region, with Blizzard encouraging a move in order to smooth the population issue. The update posts have re-iterated the need to switch realms, and have also noted additional realms that Blizzard suggest that players should move from in order to ease player traffic. Blizzard now suggest players move off of the following realms:
US:
- Herod – PvP
- Faerlina – PvP
- Whitemane – PvP
EU:
- Shazzrah – PvP
- Golemagg – PvP
The posts have also restated that the population indicators are a reflection of the technology at Blizzard’s disposal in 2019, with servers capable of holding a much higher player capacity than they could in 2006.
“All of the existing realms have a healthy population. Even a Full realm in 2006 would be Low by our current metrics. Any realm that is listed above Medium should expect queues at launch, with increasing severity from High to Full.”
It’s also worth noting that the launch is still a few days away, and Blizzard are working from numbers based on pre-created characters, so player populations are likely to increase. Some players are reluctant to change realms, fearing that the names they have reserved may not be available if they elect to switch, or that the more dedicated players will be less likely to switch realms, even in the wake of long queue times.
