The WoW Classic AMA on Reddit ended yesterday, and the dev team has answered thousands of questions. If you don’t have the patience to read every single question and answer, we’re here to make a list with the most important questions about the beginning of WoW Classic and more. There’s also a huge forum post on the official Blizzard website where you can see the Q&A compilation.
Servers, Population, Character Creation, The Next Phases
Q: What exactly are the pop caps for a layer? And extrapolating from that, what are the server pop thresholds roughly indicating (what makes a server low vs medium vs high?) – source
A: We’re not releasing specific numbers, that will likely change dramatically. Based on the response we got from name reservations, we’re anticipating large player populations for some realms initially. This may change as players switch to lower population realms. We’ll use layers to help improve performance in the short-term if large groups of players cluster in an area. We hope to reduce the use of layering over time as people spread out in each realm.
Q: Do you have a contingency plan to deal with a larger-than-expected population? […] how quickly will you be able to add new servers? – source
A: We have contingency plans in place to bring up additional realms quickly if needed. We may also integrate character transfers (this ultimately became a service in original WoW.)
+A: We aren’t considering other services beyond character transfer at this time.
Q: How long do you expect the queues to be [for realms showing Full]? – source
A: Based on the name reservations we’ve seen, the queue time on some realms will be extremely long.
Q: What are the plans after Phase 6? More content for classic or moving to TBC? – source
A: We’ve done most of the hard work by bringing back 1.12 so progressing to Burning Crusade would be a lot easier for us. Our plan is to identify everything we need to do should we ever decide to go this route. We want to be sensitive to the desires of our players. Some may want BC and some may not. We’ll be following the Classic community closely to help determine what our next steps should be.
Q: Will you offer free realm transfers if servers get way overpopulated after launch? – source
A: This is definitely one of the options we are considering. But for now, we are encouraging players to use the name reservation period to transfer their characters to lower population realms.
Q: Will Mankrik’s wife be moved to recreate an authentic Vanilla experience? – source
A: nochanges
Q: During the development of Classic did you stumble over any easter eggs or secrets that the community never discovered ? – source
A: When we were going through the original source code, we uncovered a few inline developer comments. It was super interesting to read them – like messages from the past. One of the most colorful comments I enjoyed was in reference to adding spells: “whatever you do, don’t get them wet”.
Other Important Answers Regarding the Launch Day And The Next Phases
- There may be a Realm Restart or maintenance between this week and the day of launch, but realms will be available in the minutes before the launch, and the buttons will light up as they’re launched. You do not need to exit and enter to see them light up!
- There will be no planned maintenance downtime in the morning after the launch.
- Players should experience fewer errors and disconnects than what they’ve seen on August 12 during name reservations.
- Additional realms can be added if all realms are capped out at launch day and there are massive queues.
- If realms are overpopulated at 50K+ by Phase 2, more realms will be added to be able to phase out layering.
- Layering will be tweaked in the first day as people transition to other zones [more]
- Phase 1 Raid Drop items are mostly from 1.12 [more]
- Catch-up gear added in 1.10 will be available in Phase 5.
- October Halloween in WoW Classic – Trick or Treat! confirmed.
- Skeletons of defeated players will disappear faster; a player will not be able to leave multiple corpses in the game, as it was in the Original WoW.
For more Q&A than the ones compiled on the Blizzard forum, head over to the AMA on Reddit. Five days of waiting, and we’ll finally go back in time with WoW Classic!
Sonia Theo has a long experience in writing, and now she is our associate journalist covering tech, gaming and mobile news. She has a BA in English and German and a BA in Arts and Design. Sonia likes writing about the latest updates in current and future games, guides and reviews. Her favorite past times is gaming, crafting and cooking. Sonia is always ready to help players with tips when they’re in a tough boss fight.