Actually, Wrath of the Lich King starts at 12:00 AM German time, but there are already huge queues in WoW Classic – even on German servers. The demand is enormous and is expected to grow.
Update from September 27, 8:20 PM: The German server Venoxis is experiencing massive queues again. You’re currently looking at over 2 hours of wait time and a line of over 9,000 players. Everlook also has a queue of about 1,500 players with a wait time of about 20 minutes. Other German servers seem to be unaffected.
Other EU servers also seem to be absolutely overcrowded at the moment. According to reports, this affects both realms that were already closed and the “Fresh Start” realms.
MeinMMO editor Benedict Grothaus witnessed the rush live at 12:00 AM – This is what it looked like:
Original: Where are the queues? Currently, the German server Venoxis is affected by a queue of over 6,000 players (as of 10:50 PM). According to calculations, this corresponds to a wait time of 104 minutes, about one and three-quarter hours.
If you want to kick off right at the release of Wrath of the Lich King at 12:00 AM, you will not make it on time even if you log in now, more than an hour before the expansion’s release.
Can I still play? In our tests, it was possible to enter all other realms and create new characters. This applies to all German and other European servers that were not previously closed due to overcrowding.
However, we also had characters created on Everlook and Razorfen during testing, the two largest German realms after Venoxis. We cannot say if that affects the queue.
If your character is stuck on Venoxis, you have the option right in the queue to use one of the free server transfers from WotLK Classic to move to a less populated realm.
Are you stuck in the queue? Here is the cool trailer for the expansion to shorten your wait time – or make it more unpleasant, depending:
Rush on WotLK leads to queues before release
Will it get worse? Most likely, yes. Even the pre-patch of WotLK was so popular, that queues of well over 10,000 players occurred. Now, at the release, the rush for the game will certainly be even greater.
This only applies to the larger realms, though. Smaller servers usually do not have this problem. If you are lucky and allowed to log in immediately, you can already travel to Northrend and begin leveling to level 80.
As long as not too many people are around, you should be able to complete quests quickly. Tips for leveling and the new zones can be found here:
Whether the server transfers help reduce the rush on the more densely populated servers remains to be seen. However, probably too few players will switch, and too many want to play at the same time. Traditionally, the servers of World of Warcraft are overloaded with each addon release, so expect waiting times this time as well.
By the weekend at the latest, you will probably encounter queues, at least in the first two weeks if you play on large servers. But somehow, that’s also part of the feeling of Wrath of the Lich King back then…
WoW Classic: The chief developers explain how challenging it is to actually create WotLK
