The WoW Classic release time is going live for some gamers on August 26 and others on August 27.
As confirmed by Blizzard earlier in 2019, the World of Warcraft launch times is dependant on where you live in the world.
And plenty of prep is being done to make the big server launches as painless as possible for returning fans.
As many will already know, WoW Classic doesn’t require an individual subscription and is available alongside the base game.
It will be a version of World of Warcraft without any major expansion packs included and will be much closer to the Vanilla version of the game first released.
As mentioned above, WoW Classic servers will be going live for fans in the United States and the UK, on August 26.
WoW Classic release times have been confirmed as 3pm PST, 6PM EST, and 11pm BST.
So for Wow Classic fans in the UK, you’ll just manage to start playing on August 26.
For players in Europe, World of Warcraft Vanilla servers will be going live just past midnight on August 27.
But even with all the prep being put in by Blizzard, it looks like there’s going to be some hefty wait times involved.
As of now, a large number of WoW Classic characters have been created on the following realms:
- Faerlina – PvP
- Herod – PvP
- Mankrik – Normal
- Pagle – Normal
- Thalnos – PvP
- Whitemane – PvP
And players with characters on these realms are likely to experience severe queues at release.
So even if you do have WoW Classic installed and ready to go at 11pm on Monday, August 26, you could be waiting a long time to join the game.
The good news is that Blizzard is opening up new servers and realms and also lifting the character limit.
This is happening later today at around 6pm in the UK, with Blizzard warning fans: “We will remove the limitation on only creating a total of three WoW Classic characters per WoW account. Thereafter, players will be able to create up to 10 characters per Classic realm, for a total of 50 characters across all Classic realms per WoW account.
“At this time, all realms that have a Full or High population tag are expected to experience extended queues.
“We urge players on realms marked Full or High to plan to play on one of these new realms to avoid the longest queues, and to help spread the player population as evenly as possible and provide the best play experience for everyone.”
The new WoW Classic Realms opening later today include Incendius, Bigglesworth, Old Blanchy, and Westfall.
Blizzard says that relative realm population will be visible in-game to help in choosing a realm.
So WoW fans should see Low, Medium, or High in the realm selection screen, making for an early warning for long queue times.
If there are high numbers of players congregating on individual realms during name reservation and character creation, Blizzard will post warnings about the potential for queues on those realms, giving you time to choose alternate realms.