World Of Warcraft Classic is 'substantially' boosting player capacity

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Surely that's a fire hazard.

(Image credit: Blizzard/Artemsaetg)

In order to combat the enormous queues to get into its World Of Warcraft Classic servers, Blizzard has announced via the official forums that it is "substantially increasing the number of players that can be simultaneously logged in and playing". There's no specifics on exactly how many more players are being let in, but it sounds like the capacity hotfix was deployed last night.

Blizzard will be keeping a close eye on server stability to see if cramming in all those extra players has any negative repercussions, although one likely side-effect seems to be further increasing in-game queues to complete certain quests. Players are already having to line up to kill quest target NPCs. Still, better to be waiting in-game than on the login screen.

Players on the WoW forums are reporting that there are still up to 10,000 player queues to enter some popular servers. Whether the fix has gone live or not is hotly debated, but mathematically speaking, even if server capacity is increased by few thousand, that's likely not going to put much of a dent in a five-figure queue.

While I'm personally baffled by the huge success of World Of Warcraft Classic, I can't help but feel that long server queues and developers scrambling to fit more players in is an authentic part of the retro MMO experience. Probably not intentional on Blizzard's part, but even the forum complaints have me a little nostalgic. If there's one thing both Horde and Alliance can agree on, it's that queues are their real enemy right now.

Dominic Tarason
Dominic Tarason
Contributing Writer

The product of a wasted youth, wasted prime and getting into wasted middle age, Dominic Tarason is a freelance writer, occasional indie PR guy and professional techno-hermit seen in many strange corners of the internet and seldom in reality. Based deep in the Welsh hinterlands where no food delivery dares to go, videogames provide a gritty, realistic escape from the idyllic views and fresh country air. If you're looking for something new and potentially very weird to play, feel free to poke him on Bluesky. He's almost sociable, most of the time.