Sunday WoW Classic about Layers Again

Time for the Sunday sum up of what is happening with WoW Classic, on what is the two month anniversary since launch.

Classic is as classic does

I’m writing this in advance, so here’s hoping Blizzard doesn’t do anything else to make me regret writing about them.

Blizzard updated the layering status, listing out more servers that have been reduced to a single layer, which Blizz has deemed a requirement before advancing WoW Classic to phase 2 of their unlock plan. (Though we got Dire Maul early because things were taking longer than expected.)

Back at the beginning of the month Blizz listed out 13 servers in the Americas that and 6 servers in Europe that had been formally locked into a single layer.  You can now add to that 17 additional servers in the Americas, making it 30 out of the 36 servers in the Americas now on a single layer.

This change took place on Tuesday.  Our server, Bloodsail Buccaneers was on the list.  It was probably good that this happened after the running of the gnomes, even if layering did cause some odd moments.  Since the change things seem to be okay, if noticeably more crowded in some zones, though admittedly we haven’t hit a weekend prime time yet.

Other servers that had layering locked out were a different story.  SynCaine reported queues returning immediately on Benediction and very crowded conditions. Not a good sign for mid-week.  I wonder if Blizz will roll back that plan if the weekend ends up with more queues.

The European server team is not moving as fast on the layering front.  Previously only 6 of the 38 European servers had been locked down to a single layer, and this week they announced they were locking out layering on just 4 more servers.

The Euro team is either being more conservative or their servers are even more crowded that the Americas.

The latter might be why they are opening up a new European realm.  On Friday the Celebras was opened up, a German language RP realm, bringing the number of European realms up to 39.  Two months into WoW Classic and they are opening up another new server.

Also, RP servers for the win!

Free character transfers to Celebras will from the Everlook, Lakeshire, Razorfen, and Hydraxian Waterlords servers.

And so it goes.

Between now and next Sunday we have BlizzCon, so I expect there will be more than a little bit of news to report out of that.