Today, World of Warcraft: Classic community manager Kaivax made a post on the official Blizzard forums warning players of unprecedented levels of server capacity regarding the Classic PvP realm, Herod. In the post, Kaivan warns that, based on the initial name reservations, Herod is going to be "massively overpopulated". 

The full post can be found below:

Based on name reservations so far, the Herod realm is looking to be massively overpopulated. If all existing players on this server remain there, login queues in excess of 10,000 players are a certainty, and possibly much higher than that.

We recently opened up the Stalagg realm, and we urge players on Herod to consider moving there. There are a lot of players currently on Herod and we want Stalagg to fill up before we open any new PvP realms. This is so that player population is spread as evenly as possible before launch, in order to provide the best play experience.

While we are able to fit several times more players on a single realm in 2019 than was the case in 2006, we are not going to raise that cap any further, even though we have the technical capacity to do so. Raising realm caps would simply forestall the problem, letting more players in at launch but creating an unsustainable situation down the line, with severe queues when we turn off layering permanently before Phase 2 of our content unlock plan.

Please also note that our realm population estimates of Low, Medium, High, and Full are based on this increased capacity – a Medium realm today already has more characters on it than even the most crowded realms did back in 2006.

Our top priority in planning for WoW Classic’s launch has been ensuring that we are laying the groundwork for strong realm communities that will endure over the months and years to follow, which is why we’re cautiously opening new servers to meet demand.

More crowded than ever before.

One of the most interesting parts of this post was the reveal that realm population estimates are operating on a model of increased capacity thanks to new 2019 server capabilities. Or, as Kaivax puts it a "Medium realm today already has more characters on it than even the most crowded realms did back in 2006."

This has massive implications towards the suspected success of WoW: Classic but doesn't address the most popular criticism involving the games ability to maintain excitement and an active player base. While a large majority of gamers vehemently declare their allegiance to the new WoW: Classic servers, many other fans of the MMORPG are concerned that all of the excitement is simply nostalgic hype and, while the buzz surrounding the game is high now, it will inevitably teeter off to abysmal lows.

While no one can say for sure whether or not WoW: Classic will be the success Blizzard fans hope, it is clear that leading up to the release anticipation over the title is reaching all-time highs. Then again, reserving a character name is very different than leveling a character from levels 1-60 and subsequently completing all of WoW: Classic's end game content.