Blizzard plans to create fresh, new servers that will allow players to start from zero in the latest Classic experience, Wrath of the Lich King. Blizzard’s anticipation claims that plenty of newcomers are expected to arrive in the game, which is why they want to make their stay unique and compelling. On the new servers, Blizzard will deny server transfers for at least three months after their bootup. In this way, players will endure a competing sensation and keep up the pace without worrying that they’re behind.
Shortly after the announcement in which Blizzard confirmed the Wrath of the Lich King fresh start realms, on Wednesday, Aggrend, WoW Classic Game Producer posted the following bluepost:
Myself and other members of the team have been reading through a lot of the responses about Fresh Start servers since it was announced, and the common feedback we’ve seen is concern over the idea of transfers opening after the servers have been live for 90 days. I felt it was important to chime in and highlight that Kaviax’s post specifically mentions they won’t be available for at least 90 days. As in, at minimum.
The concept of opening fresh start realms in this way for Classic is somewhat new territory for us, so in this situation we believe its very important to carefully monitor the population on these new realms, observe player behavior, and listen to feedback on this topic. There is nothing saying that transfers must flip on exactly on day 91, day 191, or even day 991 and we don’t intend to commit to an arbitrary timeframe for transfers to become enabled super far ahead of time. We plan to be very thoughtful and deliberate when it comes to how and when we lift the restrictions around transfers on these realms.
So to reiterate, 90 days is the absolute minimum amount of time we’d wait to open transfers, and we intend to listen to the feedback we get on this very carefully. If the realms are healthy and we don’t feel the need to open transfers on these realms, we won’t rush to do so. The team really wants to take care with anything we do here because of how excited many players are about the idea of being able to start fresh and have that type of “equal playing field” experience in Wrath of the Lich King Classic. We are excited about it too, and we really want to take our time and ensure that the experience is as awesome as it can be.
Thanks for reading, and I hope this does a little bit to reassure some concerns about this. As always, thank you so much for the comments and feedback!
World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King, often referred to as WotLK, or Wrath, is the second expansion set for the massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) World of Warcraft, following The Burning Crusade. It adds a substantial amount of content to the game world, including the continent of Northrend, home of the eponymous Lich King, and a new character “hero” class.
