On Herod
11 a.m. 5,000 people in queue 300 minutes wait
2 p.m. 8000 people in queue over 300 minutes wait
4 p.m. 11,000 people in queue over 350 minutes wait
I woke up at 3 a.m. and it was the only time I could get in without sitting and staring at the screen for several hours hoping I didn’t get disconnected when I alt-tabbed.
Thats why they are introducing two new realms tomorrow. They did change the queue times, but there are still a lot of people not budging to leave so its congested. It was this way back in Vanilla, and why my friends were glad when they offered the character transfer service back then. Hopefully they offer it soon.
What sucks is that so many people are in guilds that all joined servers together and we have people nearing their level 20’s …
Noticed a difference on Myzrael, but at worst I only ever saw a 6500+ queue on day one, yesterday I got on during peak times with zero queue.
Yea all my guild went to a server but that server had such a queue and still does around this time that I went to a lower pop by myself. Told them I’d talk in discord lol. I just wanted to play xD
My guild is on a PVE server, and with the update, our 30 to 90 min queues during peak hours are now mostly gone. Sometimes we get a few minutes wait, but that’s it.
The improvement is enough that we don’t have to worry about logging in at non-peak times and then having to train a cat to hit the space bar every 5 minutes to stay logged in.
But for the more heavily populated realms, yeah, I’m sure it’s like it doesn’t make a meaningful difference whether queue times are 3-5 hours vs. over 10 hours, you won’t be able to log in when you want to.
/moo 
Isn’t this evidence by itself that queue times are changing via population?
People are mostly refusing to budge from Herod and with good reason. Once the hype dies down (after the first 2 weeks usually), a very large number of realms will see population drops. Blizzard expects them to be noticeable, so with Herod being the server to roll on for a lot of people (myself included), it makes zero sense to risk the time it would take to level another toon elsewhere with no guarantee that Blizzard will allow progress transfers to Herod in the near future.
In other words, if you chose a popular server, you need to accept that the queues will last at least a week or two at minimum. I work a 9-5 myself, and I’ve had a total of 3 hours of gametime since launch. I had to log in on my lunch break and the queue got me in about 5 and a half hours later. I knew the risks, but the reward of a top 3 server later will make it worth it.
I don’t recall ever seeing a queue in Classic that was longer than a few minutes and I moved from EQ to WoW when it launched.
Not saying it didn’t happen but it wasn’t close to this.
This is what I’m thinking too. I don’t want to end up on Ghost-town realm just to play more the first week
Thank god… You are reasonable person. I had almost lost hope in humanity. You are 100% spot on!
I came into WoW late 06, so my first launch was TBC. I wasn’t on a major server then (pretty sure it was Garithos) so I don’t remember MAJOR queues, but I do remember much bigger queues in later patches once i moved to Korgath and Mal’Ganis. Especially with Wrath and WoD.
Point is, the past expansions save those two have always been just filler. The hype wasn’t built up NEARLY as much, even though every new WoW was supposedly a killer of the previous one. Twitch had Classic WoW at 1.2 MILLION viewers on the first night. Most of those kids probably subbed just to show up in their favorite streamers’ videos, so that massively inflated the numbers on certain servers too. The hype with old-school vets, new school kids, and Streamer fanboys WILL die down. It’s just gonna take a natural amount of time to do so. The grind in Classic will absolutely cull what many people are calling the “tourists.”
Back in vanilla days, most people didn’t really have online friends. Now most people do.
So picking up and moving was much easier because you weren’t socially tied to a realm.
Classic forced people onto a handful of servers. This was poor server management, but one heck of a hype marketing.
Do you have a source about the 2 servers ?
Dude did you not read the top forum posts?
oh I know, my online friends got all split up. But the one that I first met 13 years ago came with me to my new server so I don’t feel as lonely 
No we had real friends that played, what’s the difference? Also we have entire guilds move from EQ so not sure what you are saying or how you think it’s valid like this was the first game ever online.
Indeed not. Thanks tho!
8086
Estimated Wait Time - 284 minutes
This is my queue on Herod @ 6:32 PM EST. Will this still happen @ 6:32 EST tomorrow? Most likely. Will it happen the same time next weekend? Possibly. Will it happen the following? Highly unlikely.
Be patient, guys. You can still play other games with WoW queued up in the background. If your friends are racing to 60 without you there, they probably care more about their own toons than the journey with you. The beauty of the Classic experience that everyone’s talking about? It gives you ample opportunity to make NEW ones.
Not the first game, but online gaming was still in its infancy.
Few had online friends at that point. Now most people over 10 have an online social clique.
The point being it was easier for individuals to move as the social aspect wasn’t so deep.