World of Warcraft News and Raiding Strategies

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!

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... (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

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. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Where are the Zeppelins/Boats?
Are they not working or something? I have a bunch of people asking in general chat, but they’re just not showing up? Are they timegated or bugged?
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. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Put your best battle pet teams to the test with this week’s event. To get in on the action, open your Pet Journal (Collections Shift+ P) and click the “Find Battle” button to be match up with an opponent with their own team of well-trained companions.

Look for the following all week long:

• Chronicler Shoopa in Zuldazar and in Boralus has a quest for you – The Very Best. Or, if you forget to pick it up there, you can start it within the Adventure Journal.
• Quest requirement: Win 5 pet battles versus other players with a team of three level-25 pets.
• Reward: One Ultimate Battle-Training Stone.
• Passive bonus: All Pet Battle experience gains are increased by +200%

Every Week
The Bonus Events system consists of a rotating schedule of different activities, currently scheduled to run each week beginning on Tuesdays. Each Bonus Event grants a passive bonus to a particular game activity and offers a once-per-event quest with a noteworthy reward for accomplishing a related goal. The in-game calendar can serve as your one-stop reference for the event schedule. The Adventure Guide also offers a direct link to active Bonus Events, allowing you to easily accept any associated quests.

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:

• Individual Classic Realm forums will be opened prior to launch.
• Starting from 27th August, all WoW Classic sections will require an active subscription or game time to post in.
  
  • The current Classic Discussion section will also be archived tomorrow and a new one created so we start from a clean slate.
• 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!

Due to very high demand, we’ve opened two new WoW Classic realms in this region:


Deviate Delight - RP-PvP - Eastern
Smolderweb - PvP - Pacific
Sulfuras - PvP - Eastern


Ashkandi - Normal - Eastern
Kirtonos - PvP - Eastern
Rattlegore - PvP - Pacific
Kurinnaxx – PvP - Pacific
Kromcrush – PvP – Eastern

Yojamba - PvP - AEST

We suggest that players choosing a realm consider one of these, as other realms currently marked as “Full” population will experience extended queues.

Thank you!

Due to extremely high demand, we’ve established the following new WoW Classic realms in this region:

Stonespine – PvP - EN-EU
Noggenfogger – PvP – EN-EU

We suggest that players choosing a realm consider one of these, as the other realms currently marked as “Full” population will experience queues.

Thank you!

We are aware of, and as our top priority, we are working through issues that some players are having logging into WoW Classic, including the ‘World Server Down’ error.

Thank you for your patience.

Q: Will I need to pay for access to WoW Classic?
A: Everyone with active game time or a subscription to World of Warcraft will have access to WoW Classic.

Q. Can I use WoW Tokens in WoW Classic?
A. You won’t be able to buy and sell WoW Tokens in WoW Classic, but you can buy and sell them in World of Warcraft and use them toward your game time.

Q. Will my computer be able to run WoW Classic?
A. You can find a complete list of minimum system specifications for both Windows and Mac in our WoW Classic Primer post here. The recommended requirements are the same for WoW Classic as they are for World of Warcraft.

Q: How do I access WoW Classic?
A: You’ll need to access the game through the Battle.net desktop app.

1. Open the Battle.net desktop app and select World of Warcraft from the side menu.
2. Under the Version menu, select World of Warcraft Classic. If you have more than one World of Warcraft account, you’ll see a second dropdown for Account. Select the active account you wish to play on from that column.
3. Click the Install button. The progress bar will show you when the game is available to play.
4. Once the installation is complete, click the Play button.

Phase 1 (Classic Launch)

• Molten Core
• Onyxia
• Maraudon

Phase 2

• Dire Maul
• Azuregos
• Kazzak

Phase 3

• Blackwing Lair
• Darkmoon Faire
• Darkmoon deck drops begin

Phase 4

• Zul’Gurub
• Green Dragons

Phase 5

• Ahn’Qiraj War Effort begins
• Ahn’Qiraj raids open when the war effort dictates
• Dungeon loot reconfiguration: Tier 0.5 Dungeon gear, Relics, drop rates and location changes

Phase 6

• Naxxramas
• Scourge Invasion

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)

• You can PvP one another in the world, but there is no tracking, and no formal rewards for doing so.

Phase 2

• Honor System (including Dishonorable Kills)
• PvP Rank Rewards

Phase 3

• Alterac Valley (version 1.12)
• Warsong Gulch

Phase 4

• Arathi Basin

Phase 6

• World PvP objectives in Silithus and Eastern Plaguelands