I am remembering. I also know they went above the cap but not by 22k, no.
Ding ding ding, you win the internets sir
I am saying player actively playing on there server… not the cap.
High pop vanilla server had a population of around 15-25k, with a 3k cap.
Nost had between 10k and 15k at peak times.
You’re dancing around the point as well, what happens with layering when whatever the cap is, is reached?
Do they increase the cap of the server when they plan on removing layering?
Is their a limit to what the cap should be? If that cap is reached do they split the community for the health of the server while at the same time dividing the community and relationships built?
So many variables and holes, I don’t see the point of layering beyond the starting zones. I think it causes more problems than it solves.
@ Hammis - Go look it up lol, it is estimated that vanilla servers had a server pop max of 3k.
As far as me saying 30 seperate servers, you do realize there was 40+ PvP servers back when Vanilla was out?
get rekt’d kid
i mean we just got a new server added today, i expect there to be one or two more possible additions, server caps are probably set to 20k loads at peak hours but blizzard has the money and resources and server capabilities to do much much more if they feel it is required, so i wouldnt worry too much
Considering we are talking about Classic and not vanilla not sure how what you said is relevant.
But we can talk about vanilla. Using wayback machine we can see WoW census data counting characters (level 10+) on servers within a 30 day time period.
In 2006 we can see large servers counting 25k characters. By 2007 before TBC large servers have 30k+ characters. Again if we say every account can have 10 characters that they actively log onto so they can be counted then 10 characters = 1 account. So yeah 30k characters would max out to about 3k accounts.
That would be the lowest estimate possible since some of those full vanilla servers where pvp. On the pve considering an account could technically make 20 characters on a server we could say a 30k characters vanilla server could have as so as 1.5k accounts.
But if we used the high estimate of 1 character = 1 account then we are talking about 30k accounts. So somewhere between 3k-30k accounts for a full vanilla server. If for some reason you want to demand that the low esitmate is the right one, then I do not care.
I think the more important point is that we don’t know what the numbers are for classic servers. I responded to your made up numbers with some of my own (but I think mine are better).
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But for vanilla we have another way to look at things. Lets say old wow subscription numbers are about right. And lets use your made up number of 3k accounts max on a server.
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So that means we need about 300 servers to hold 1 million accounts. But lets say before TBC they had 7 million subs. that would require 2100 servers if they where capped at 3k.
I don’t even think vanilla Wow has every had 300 servers let alone 2100. But lets say there where 300 servers before TBC. 7.5million subs / 300 server = 25k per server.
EDIT: I was off by an order of magnitude at the end there, fixed.
I ended up being way too interested in if this question could be solved.
I took the server status from the official page and the character counts from realmpop for retail servers.
Minimum character counts for each type of realm is:
Low: 100k
Med: 120k
High: 155k
Full: 180k
If I take the average values instead of the min, and then look at an average of 3-6 characters per account, the results look like this:
(numbers were all rounded to nearest 5k for character count)
| Low | Medium | High | Full | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Realm Count | 18 | 159 | 33 | 25 |
| Characters | Average | 140,000 | 175,000 | 265,000 |
| Max | 160,000 | 330,000 | 395,000 | 670,000 |
| Min | 100,000 | 120,000 | 155,000 | 180,000 |
| 3 char/acc | 46,667 | 58,333 | 88,333 | 125,000 |
| 4 char/acc | 35,000 | 43,750 | 66,250 | 93,750 |
| 5 char/acc | 28,000 | 35,000 | 53,000 | 75,000 |
| 6 char/acc | 23,333 | 29,167 | 44,167 | 62,500 |
If I had to pick a number, I’d say a full server is around 80k unique accounts.
I know. Read the post heirarchy. I’m saying you didn’t have a capacity of 25k on a server. You had a 3k cap for online and a few k above it, not 22k above it.
Again, this is the PSERVER mindset where you’ve got 10k online caps and a server that’s 30k people full - when you’ve got time zones around the world to spread that around.
We don’t have that time zone spread like pservers so the overall max capacity won’t be 25k.
Sadly, it’s hard to develop rivalries and relationships with people on different layers 
I know that… but with layering servers are going to be intentionally overpopulated to stave off attrition.
It’s the whole point of layering
I think we are going to have to deal with higher server caps though, Bliz has suggested such.
Queues and server transfers, the same thing they did in Vanilla when populations got too large.
My prediction, two or however many weeks out from Phase 2 there will be an announcement: Layering is still active on servers A, B, and C, we anticipate long queue times on these servers when Phase 2 is launched. Today we are opening voluntary transfers to servers X, Y, and Z.
They obviously have populations in mind, otherwise they wouldn’t be talking about queues at launch on the 26th. If they didn’t care they would just let everyone in and spool up however many layers were needed. They’re obviously trying to keep layer counts in check so that populations can fall to “normal” naturally after launch.
Based on absolutely nothing but my own estimation:
Low: 0-15k
Medium: 15-25k
High: 25-40k
Full: over 40k
BUT these could be a LOT more with small amount of options we have.