09/01 Realm population and TBC launch

The Burning Crusade is soon upon us and in preparation for launch we’re continuing to make sure the population on the realms is at a level where the community thrives and queues are not overly long and/or frequent. There are several measures to ensure this:

Realm tags: the “Full” and “Recommended” realm tags will be used continually to direct new and restarting players where to start new characters.

Free migration: we’re currently preparing a batch of free migrations. Read more about it here: http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=107541742&sid=1 . Additional free migration may be run after launch.

Raising realm caps: as the increased world size naturally accommodates for more players online all realms will have the population caps raised at launch.

New realms: at launch we will open a number of new realms. The exact number and names will be revealed soon. More realms will be opened as needed in the weeks and months ahead.

Realm split: in the case other measures are not enough we will consider doing a realm split. You can find more information about realm splits in the FAQ here: http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=107652212


If you have questions, please feel free to post them in this thread. We’ll try answer as best we can.

Q u o t e:


This is the worst idea I ever heard.

Do not undertake such a customer unfriendly initiative.

Thank You

This won't happen unless we really have to, hence it's last in the list.
If we do end up doing this it will only be to make the ultimate game play experience better.

Q u o t e:
How many Free migrations wil you initiate before you will do a realm split.

This depends entirely on the specific situation. If we see that after 5 days of migration only 5 or 10 people move each day there's not much effect and we'll have to consider changes or entirely other options. If a realm loses a good amount of people in a migration but fills up again each three months we'll try the free migration first each time, not decide that we've had enough and split it. ;)

Q u o t e:
Why is it not an option to give players on overpopulated a Free migration to any realm of his/her choosing, using the Free migration avible to players at all time, normaly for a fee?

Because players moving from one highly populated realm to another isn't helping the matter on either realm. We select the destination realms carefully, and will hopefully be able to offer a lot of choices when we don't run as many migrations at the same time as this first planned batch.

Q u o t e:
Please please please look into the tag for KILROGG server.

We are a new server but recently have been getting queues 300+, you have just given the option of a migration which is great, but the server is still flagged as RECOMMENDED.

If you could remove our recomended tag, that'd be great :)

Hm? I checked in the game client just now, and only three English realms are Recommended - none of them is Kilrogg.

Q u o t e:
Will there be new PvE realms (non transfer) with TBC launch?

Yes. New realms at launch are covered in this thread: http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=102480771&sid=1

Q u o t e:
Do you have any idea what realms might get splited ?

Hopefully none.