Is Area-52 really that populated?

Community General Discussion
1

Area 52 has a login queue. Tons of threads about it here and in CS forums.
Stormrage - no login queue
Zul’jin - no login queue

All 3 are listed as “Full” servers.
Something seems off if 2/3 of them have no queue time.

Checking other “Full” servers, looks like Illidan and Tichondrius also have a queue. So far none of the others seem to have one.

So what’s up with these servers? Are they really the full of players?
If so, what’s the plan to address this?
How come CRZ/Sharding/Phasing doesn’t eliminate the bottlenecking? Servers, beyond Mythic raiding and the AH seem to have little purpose in modern WoW.

2

Yes, it really is that populated. It has always had queue times at most every expansion launch that I can remember to date.

3

Yes its a very busy realm. I have toons on that realm and it took about an hour and half before I could get in due to the queue. You have to have patience of a saint to sit in the long queues.
I still plan to transfer at least 2 of my toons to another realm.

4

my realm was part of their old battlegroup, and right after CRZ was implemented, A52 typically kept Darnassus and Goldshire free of NPCs

5

All of my main toons are A52 and Tich. Yes, they are that populated.

6

Stormrage had a log in queue earlier today, had to wait a half hour

1 Like
7

This is why some transparency on would be nice on server populations and demographics. How am I supposed to pick a server that’s full enough to not seem dead, but not too full for peak times? What if it’s 100% horde or alliance?

1 Like
8

I made a decision over the last two years to consolidate on A52 for Horde, and Stormrage for Alliance. Around 99% of the time, being on a high-pop server doesn’t have much downside. I was on Argent until the services sale a month or so ago. The AH was out of whack there – people were asking 20k for Uncanny gear.

So, now, yeah, it’s that 1% of miserable. Login queues on both servers. Three hours for A52; 50 min for Stormrage.

I am just going to ride it out. After a few days things usually settle down. Fortunately, as part of working from home I can take breaks during the day and level.

5 Likes
9

25 thousand horde on Area 52 alone.

10

Correct! Last night Stormrage hit around a 4k que.

1 Like
11

There are disadvantages to high population realms. This is one of them. I prefer medium pop realms but they seem to drop to low pop after I join them. You kind of can’t win.

12

Realm progress has a nice list with populations. I’m on Thrall third most populated horde server I haven’t seen a q yet.

1 Like
13

area 52 was medium when i joined years and years ago

14

yesterday, someone pointed out that we had queues because blizzard restricted the amount of players that could log on some servers in order to prevent the horrible of the first day, wich resulted in very very long queues and blizzard still don’t acknowledge our problem

15

I came from Stormrage, to A52.
Missssssstake. 3 hour queue last night

16

Its a nightmare to wait an hour to get in. I hope blizzard do something to fix that.

18

^

Also on thrall. It’s always busy but not “I have to stare at this screen 2 hours before I can log in” busy.

19

I remember when Archeage first launched there were about 4-6 hour queues per server and that was for members. I use to remote connect to my pc at work to save time.

20

ya 25,000 that have bought/sold on the AH or killed a heroic+ raid boss

that’s typically the only way they can gather population information (sourced: bottom of wowhead, though outdated)
some population websites include m+/rated pvp/AH numbers over exclusively heroic raid + numbers

1 Like
21

I had all my Horde characters on Area 52 during Cata and through WoD. It was a great server. At that time it wasn’t as toxic as the notorious servers (Illidan, Tich) but I don’t know if that’s changed.

If Blizzard would turn off CRZ for Area 52 I would go back in a heartbeat.