Following the recent announcement of a "Free Character Move" service that would allow players who have made characters on overcrowded realms to transfer to lower population realms, World of Warcraft: Classic community manager Kalvax provided more information on how the character move service will work.

READ: Blizzard adds two, then three more servers to combat massive queues.

READ: Hundreds of Thousands of Players Try and Login to Classic WoW Servers: Chaos Ensues

Most notably, it was revealed that three new realms were being created. The realms that can transfer to them are among the most populated (and overcrowded) realms in WoW: Classic:

" As we previously announced, free character moves will become available in this region very soon. When these free character moves open, player-characters at any level will be able to move:

For approximately one day, the new realms will be restricted to only those players using a free character move. After one day, any player may create new characters there. This is to allow players using the free character move service a better chance at retaining the name of the character they’re moving.

We will let you know when the new realms open and free character moves are enabled."

Correcting the Queue

The decision to create new realms is a result of the games surprising popularity and the unfortunate side-affect of giving pre-registered players too-few realms to choose from initially.  Game director Ion "Watcher" Hazzikostas has made it clear that Blizzard is favoring a cautious approach to creating more realms as they suspect, in the long term, the game's population will eventually cool-off once the launch hype subsides: 

"As we bring new realms online in a given region, we wait for them to fill before opening new ones, because we want to make sure that each and every realm has a healthy population in the long term."

- Ion Hazzikostas, World of Warcraft: Classic Game Director

From this, it is fair to assume that the decision to create the three new realms, Heartseeker, Arcanite Reaper and Earthfury, was done so with confidence that they will be filled quickly. Considering Blizzard will encourage a large percentage of these new realms population to be drawn from the six most popular realms currently plagued with hour-long queues, these may be the last new realms created in response to the surprise surge of players.

Long term, healthy populated realms has been Blizzard's primary goal but solving the oppressive server queues is becoming a close second.