In fairness that would be worth the charge for people coming back to play classic and classic alone. Otherwise it is paying for half a month just to reserve names.
You are completely missing the point. Since now there ARE guilds already forming, they need to all be on the same page BEFORE name reservation. This is not something they should drop on players the day of name reservations.
The EU forum was told they would be released well prior to name reservation. It would be comically short-sighted and irresponsible for them to wait till name res day.
Why are you so adamant that it be precisely like vanilla, when I already pointed out that name reservation and already formed guilds are NOT vanilla-like? Really getting the feeling you just want an argument for argument sake.
Prior to vanilla release there were not loads of fleshed out guilds attempting to coordinate which server they would be on. Again, this is altogether different than vanilla’s release and more breathing room for player organization is needed.
It will be interesting how name rez day will play out. What happens if they underestimated the number of servers, even with the buffer of layers? Do they add more on name rez day, and if so will people be able to cancel their name rezs and instead choose a lower pop realm? And then there is the question of whether or not the realm pops will even be shown.
As stated above the stress test was most likely delayed to not take attention away from WF race. Now that it is over I expect word in 2-3 days about that stress test. If i was a betting man, I would guess 1 week before the August 13th name reservation to get a proper estimate on server number.