Blizzard announced recently that bugs that were present originally.
Naturally, that makes WoW Classic an offering that isn't really for everyone, but hype for the game has nevertheless persisted in the face of claims that the game might be too niche to thrive. Concerns over whether or not Blizzard would be cannibalizing its own current WoW playerbase haven't dissipated, but recent news regarding the sheer amount of people queuing up to give WoW Classic a try are heartening for those who worry a Classic iteration spells eventual doom for the long-standing MMO.
According to Blizzard, however, WoW Classic appears to be in no danger of anything short of a smashing launch success - as long as players are careful about which realm they choose for their characters. Blizzard issued a warning recently on Battle.net that instructed players to change server from a specific one that has been popular during the character name reservation period. According to community manager Kaivax, the Hero server faces some serious potential issues should the number of players currently committed to it attempt to log-in during the launch period:
"If all existing players on this server remain there, queues in excess of 10,000 players are a certainty, and possibly much higher than that."
Blizzard opened up the Stalagg realm in an effort to stymie the problem before it occurred, but players have been reluctant to switch realms, as Herod has been an early favorite in the community that has even had fan-made content written about its greatness. Many players are simply fans of the name, and the NA-based realm faces a launch crisis if its popularity persists. Over on the EU side of things, there's another problem - Shazzrah is facing a similar clog of players, with the proposed solution being to move over to the Gehennas realm.
Although 10,000 player queues sound truly abysmal, at the very least they're also evidence that Blizzard has a surprising amount of interest generated for a game that is essentially a re-release of preserved content that's over a decade old. The old fan-run WoW Classic servers were immensely popular, though, and a Blizzard-official iteration has the potential to be one of the biggest gaming surprises of 2019 - as long as nostalgia isn't preventing people from ing the worst parts of classic WoW and there's a major drop-off after the initial excitement fades away. There's only one way to find out, though, and that's when WoW Classic launches in just over a week on August 27, 2019.
Source: Battle.net (via Eurogamer)
