Wrath of the Lich King doesn’t actually start until 12:00 a.m. German time, but there are already huge queues in WoW Classic – also on German servers. The rush is enormous and will probably continue to grow.
Update from September 27, 8:20 p.m.: The German server Venoxis has massive queues again. You have to expect a waiting time of over 2 hours and a queue of over 9,000 players. Everlook also has a queue of around 1,500 players with around 20 minutes of waiting time. Other German servers don’t seem to be affected.
Other EU servers also seem to be absolutely overcrowded at the moment. According to reports, this affects the already closed realms as well as the “Fresh Start” realms.
MeinMMO editor Benedict Grothaus witnessed the rush live at midnight – This is what it looked like:
Original: Where are there queues? The German server Venoxis is currently affected by a queue of over 6,000 players (as of 10:50 p.m.). According to the calculation, this corresponds to a waiting time of 104 minutes, i.e. about one and a quarter hours.
Who on time for Release of Wrath of the Lich King at 12:00 am So even if he logs in now, more than an hour before the release of the expansion, he won’t be able to get started.
Can I still play? In our testing, it was possible to enter all other realms and create new characters. This applies to all German and other European Servers that have not previously been closed because they are too full.
However, during the test we had already created characters on Everlook and Razorfen, the two largest German realms after Venoxis. Whether this has an impact on the queue, we can not say.
If your character is stuck on Venoxis, you have the option directly in the queue to select one of the free server transfers from WotLK Classic and move to a less densely populated realm.
Are you waiting in line? Here’s the cool trailer for the expansion to make your wait — or more awkward, depending:
Crowds on WotLK lead to queues before release
Does it get any worse? In all probability, yes. Even the WotLK pre-patch was so popular that queues of well over 10,000 players occurred. Now, for release, the rush for the game will definitely be even greater.
However, this only applies to the larger realms. Smaller servers usually do not have this problem. If you’re lucky enough to be able to log in right away, you can travel to Northrend and start leveling up to level 80.
As long as there aren’t too many people around, you should also be able to complete quests quickly. Tips for leveling and the new zones can be found here:
It remains to be seen whether the server transfers will help to reduce the rush on the more densely populated servers. Presumably too few players change and too many want to play at the same time. Traditionally, the World of Warcraft servers are overloaded with every addon release, so expect waiting times this time too.
By the weekend at the latest, you’ll probably be queuing, at least for the first two weeks if you’re playing on big servers. But somehow that’s also part of the feeling of Wrath of the Lich King back then…
WoW Classic: The chief developers explain how difficult it actually is to create WotLK