With hotfixes that we are currently deploying to all WoW Classic realms, we are substantially increasing the number of players that can be simultaneously logged in and playing. We expect this to result in smaller queues for realms that have large queues, and some realms should no longer have queues at all.
We will closely monitor performance and stability throughout this process.
Thank you very much.
Source: Official Post
We have opened new realms in this region:
Thunderfury – PvP – Pacific
Azuresong – Normal – Pacific
Windseeker – Normal – Eastern
Benediction – PvP – Eastern
We recommend that players looking to avoid queues on Full realms move to this new realm for a smoother experience.
Thank you!
Source: Official Post
We have opened a new realm in the Oceanic region:
Felstriker – PvP – AEST
The other two PvP options in the Oceanic region are currently experiencing significant login queues, so we’re bringing an additional realm online to handle demand. We recommend that players looking for a smoother experience strongly consider moving to this new realm, which should be drawing upon a population base that is easily sufficient to support an additional healthy Oceanic PvP realm community.
Thank you for your patience!
Source: Official Post
Why does Herod still have a 900 person, 8 minute queue when it’s showing Medium population?
The way realm population display currently works once the servers are live is that High, Medium, and Low are determined dynamically, in terms relative to the most crowded realms. So a realm with pretty rough queues (say 4k-5k) might end up showing as Medium because you aren’t Faerlina, Herod, etc.
This is how it’s worked for a long time, but the unprecedented size of the queues on the handful of outlier realms is skewing the algorithm. The team’s first priority is stability and getting new servers online as needed, but beyond that, we’ll look into changing this logic to be more intuitive (i.e. showing “Full” when a server has a queue, for starters). I know, this is technically not #nochanges, but then again neither are 20k people waiting to log into the same realm…
You MUST have known there would be long queues. Why the hesitation to have servers in place to handle extra players? (not characters)
I understand the frustration: Anticipating and planning around jumping back into this world we’ve all missed, only to be stuck in a long queue, is not the experience we want anyone to have.
But from the start of planning for this launch, we’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. But if we went out with too many servers, weeks or months down the line we’d have a much tougher problem to solve. While we have tools like free character transfers available as a long-term solution to underpopulated realms, everything about that process would be tremendously disruptive to realm communities, and so it’s something we want to avoid as much as possible.
Thus, we took the path of launching with few enough realms to still thrive in the event that our most conservative estimates ended up proving accurate, while having enough servers ready to activate at a moment’s notice if needed. And clearly they were, and are, needed.
We’ve released over 20 new realms worldwide so far since launch, and we’ll be up around the clock continuing to do so until everyone who wants to experience Classic is able to. But even still, as we bring new realms online in a given region, we wait for them to fill before opening new ones, because we want to make sure that each and every realm has a healthy population in the long term.
Source: Official Post
There is a known issue that’s causing zeppelins and boats to be unavailable on certain servers (mainly the ones brought online after initial launch), which is obviously a major concern if you’re looking to switch starting areas to meet up with friends, or are getting to higher levels and have quests sending you across the sea. The upcoming regionwide restarts (4.5 hours from this post for NA/OCE) will fix this going forward.
Source: Official Post
With the release of WoW Classic mere hours away, I wanted to provide a few updates on what will happen with the Classic sections on the forums:
For now, we will not be adding Class or Profession sections for Classic. We encourage you to use the existing sections and prefix your thread title with [Classic]. We will monitor these sections over the coming weeks.
Not long to go now!
Source: Official Post
Source: Official Post
We’ve been closely following the community discussion around this add-on for WoW Classic, as well as analyzing it to make sure we understand how it works. After careful examination, we believe the nature of ClassicLFG is incompatible with our social design for Classic. Thus, in an upcoming patch (in the weeks following launch), we will be adding restrictions to the Classic add-on API that will significantly limit this add-on and others like it.
In line with what we shared at BlizzCon last year, we intend to be very careful about allowing add-on functionality that might undermine aspects of the social dynamics that are core to the Classic experience, even in cases like this where it’s clear that the addon author had no ill intent and was simply trying to provide a service to the Classic community. Ultimately, if a streamlined group-finding system was something we considered compatible with Classic, we would have kept the modern Premade Group Finder tool rather than choosing to remove it from the Classic client.
It’s difficult to articulate a clear-cut rule for exactly when an add-on crosses the line. However, when an add-on goes beyond presenting information or providing aesthetic customization, and attempts to create an interconnected social network that relies on other players also using that same add-on, we are likely to scrutinize it particularly closely.
Source: Official Post
Source: Official Post
Thanks to your help testing WoW Classic, we’ve fixed many additional reported bugs since the Beta ended last month. To really ensure that these fixes are all functioning as expected and prepare the smoothest possible launch in two weeks, we’ve just re-opened our closed beta realms for additional testing of WoW Classic.
All testers who previously had access to the closed beta are now able to log into those realms. Characters that were previously created on the beta test realms were removed, and level 40-character templates are now available. The level cap has been increased to 45. Characters in this range will find level-appropriate quests to explore in zones such as Stranglethorn Vale, Swamp of Sorrows, Dustwallow Marsh, and Desolace.
As before, please use the in-game Bug Report button to submit issues encountered while testing. If you need more text space to explain an issue you encountered, please take it to our WoW Classic Support and Bug Report forum 18, which is now open for new threads.
This final closed beta test will end on Friday, August 16.
Thanks in advance to everyone who jumps in to test WoW Classic and help us prepare for its worldwide release on August 26 at 3:00 p.m. PDT!
Source: Official Post
Source: Official Forums
Since we broke down the six phases of content that we’ll be rolling out for Classic, we’ve heard the increase in requests for PvP details so we wanted to get you up to speed on our plans there.
As was the case when World of Warcraft originally launched in 2004, there won’t be a formal PvP system in WoW Classic at the outset. You’ll still be able to PvP, of course, and there will be no Dishonorable Kills, so you’ll be free to repeatedly hunt down every player and NPC in, say, Stranglethorn Vale to your stealthy heart’s content.
That’ll change once phase 2 rolls around and we add the Honor System, which will introduce Honorable Kills, Dishonorable Kills, and PvP Rank Rewards. The items you earn from the PvP Rank Rewards will be the versions from patch 1.12. Keep in mind though, just as it did originally, it will require a substantial time investment to rank up through the Honor System. For those interested in the Rank Rewards, earning epic gear will require consistent dedication over a long period of time as a top contributor on your realm. We don’t expect to see many people running around with these items early on, but we’re certain Hillsbrad Foothills will still see its fair share of action!
In the third phase, we’ll introduce the first Battlegrounds: Alterac Valley (version 1.12) and Warsong Gulch, alongside with their associated vendors. One thing to note is that there were a couple of updates to these vendors over the course of the original patch releases, so some items won’t be available right away. For example, the Spell Penetration trinkets available from the Warsong Gulch vendor weren’t introduced until Patch 1.9, so we’re currently thinking that we’ll add these in phase 5.
The Arathi Basin Battleground will follow in phase 4, along with its specific vendor. It’ll be interesting to see how many people stay behind to guard the flag. 
Finally, in phase 6, we’ll have the world PvP objectives in Silithus and Eastern Plaguelands, which will come out at the same time as Naxxramas.
Here’s what the PvP content looks like mapped to the phases we recently posted about:
Phase 1 (WoW Classic Launch)
Phase 2
Phase 3
Phase 4
Phase 6
As we mentioned before, we haven’t yet determined exactly when each of the content phases will occur but we’ll keep you updated as they draw closer.
We’re here reading what you have to say, so we wanted to thank all of you for your feedback and discussions about Classic. Keep it going!
Source: Official Forums
Source: Official Forums
Since we first announced World of Warcraft Classic, we’ve seen questions about spell batching. While we never really eliminated spell batching in WoW, we did change how (and how often) we process batches of actions coming from players, so you’re less likely to notice that processing in today’s game. We’ve been working to ensure that in WoW Classic, the gameplay of activating spells and effects will not differ from the experience of playing original WoW.
It was relatively common in the original game to see a warrior Pummel a mage who simultaneously and successfully Polymorphed the warrior. The mage suffered Pummel damage but no spell-school lock, because the mage didn’t get interrupted. This could seem paradoxical, but it could happen because the Pummel and Polymorph were both in the same batch, and were both valid actions at the start of the batch. For the most part, things like that don’t happen in modern WoW, but they still can. We’ve made improvements to batch frequency, and the game is much more responsive than it used to be. Still, if you manage to get both a Pummel and a Polymorph into a tiny processing window in modern WoW, you’ll experience the same behavior as in original WoW.
As with many other areas of WoW Classic, authenticity is our primary concern. It used to be the norm that combat flow and PvP balance were defined and tuned in a game where spell messages were resolved less frequently. There was a single game loop that processed all messages sent and received every server tick. Nowadays, the game processes multiple loops for messages of differing priorities. Spell casts are high priority, and have been for a long time.
For WoW Classic, we’re moving spell casts to a low-priority loop that will cause them to be processed at the frequency that best fits how the game actually played in version 1.12. Two mages will be able to Polymorph each other somewhat reliably, resulting in two sheep nervously pacing around at range. Two warriors will be able to Charge one another, and the end result will be both warriors standing stunned in each other’s original location.
We think it’ll be fun to see those sorts of things happening again.
Source: Official Forums
Snoxthefox posted this classic wow map that he created on /r/classicwow and I thought I would share!
Here is a link to the Reddit thread!
