What actually is the capacity of the wow servers? No Whine, just interested

[Deleted]

Hey guys, just as the title says
this is no whine thread im just interested
what actually is the maximum player capacity of the wow servers?
because i always wondered, there are sooooo many characters on each realm, and all the npcs data and scripts and instanced stuff and phasing etc etc. that has to require allotta power so i was wondering ..

And also if someone knows the tech specs of the new servers that they recently upgraded to please post them here

[Deleted]

Here's an estimate if you pick a high load server from the list, http://www.warcraftrealms.com/census.php

[vesseblah]

Remember reading somewhere that the maximum cap when you need to queue used to be 8k players logged in at once in a realm during TBC, but it was reduced slightly in WLK to something like 5-6k. Ain't got no source for this, sorry.

[schiwing]

It would be hard for anyone outside of Blizzard to give you a definite answer because each server is different.
As someone else hinted to, server capacities can and have fluctuated.
Blizzard has been known to open some servers up with low capacities and then expand those capacities if the need arises; usually based on player queues (and maybe QQ's).
So, not every server will have the same maximum capacity, but they can be entitled to higher capacities.
Best bet would be to ask on the official forums and maybe you will get a blue response (with a correct answer).