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The broken World of Warcraft servers are Blizzard’s “number one priority”

The launch of Shadowlands caused some issues on a number of World of Warcraft servers, but Blizzard is dealing with the issue

If you’ve been having issues logging into World of Warcraft recently, you aren’t the only one. We’ve seen the numbers on Twitch reach close to one million viewers at launch, and it looks like there’s more than a few people who want to get in on the action. Blizzard has confirmed its servers have been experiencing some problems since the launch of the new expansion, Shadowlands, but that it’s working on a solution.

The server problems seem to be affecting medium to full realms the most, with queue times reported to be as long as over three hours in some instances. Given that Shadowlands launched during the week of Thanksgiving, it’s not too surprising to see why some of the game’s servers are currently being overloaded.

“We increased realm capacity to let more players than ever before into a single realm, but extreme demand on a few realms has exceeded even that capacity, so we have dialled down some of our earlier changes,” says Blizzard. “We are trying to carefully balance service stability and accessibility, and exploring multiple avenues to get everyone online and playing smoothly.”

Blizzard has highlighted five realms in particular with “service issues that are negatively impacting gameplay”, though players on other servers have also been experiencing long queue times. There have been calls from the community for Blizzard to offer free realm transfers to players who are trapped on full servers. Transferring one character to a different server costs $25 / €20 / £17, and if you happen to have multiple characters on the same server, this can be a pretty expensive procedure.

Ooof. Sad times on the Area 52 server 🙁 from wow

Here are the problematic servers that Blizzard has specifically highlighted:

  • Area 52
  • Frostmourne
  • Illidan
  • Stormrage
  • Tichondrius

Those of you who are able to play WoW without any issues, you’re in luck. Our WoW Shadowlands leveling guide will help you reach max level cap in no time, and we’ve even got a WoW Shadowlands legendary items guide to help you craft amazing legendary gear.