Are Mega-Realms Coming to MoP and Classic Era Servers?

World of Warcraft’s Senior Game Producer, Tom Ellis, has suggested several options regarding merging both Mists of Pandaria realms, as well as Classic Era realms. This follows the same realm structure used on Anniversary Realms, with the majority of players being placed into “mega-realms”, consolidating the population greatly.

This aims to address growing player concerns as the player base continues to dwindle on less popular realms. This is especially true for Mists of Pandaria, as the realms are not interconnected as they are on the Era realms, allowing players to group across different servers.

Mists of Pandaria Servers

Ellis mentions that the plan was originally to mimic Classic Era realms, where all servers are connected. With how many versions of WoW are currently up, this is no longer possible. Instead, MoP servers will likely copy Anniversary Realms mega-servers, with all servers being merged into one singular realm.

Ok, thanks to @Artemishowl_ badgering I'm looking at Classic MoP realm health options. Overall things look healthy, couple of small outliers, but I do see the opportunity for something spicy and so far everyone seems to be on board, not realm connections sadly. While we did…
— Tom Ellis (@FwoiblesWoW) September 11, 2025

Classic Era Servers

Classic Era servers will also likely receive the same treatment, with the realms being merged into one server. This will free up multiple servers that Classic is currently running on, freeing them up for future WoW servers.

Everyone so far seems on board so I think I can just reveal my plan so far and you can take this opportunity to yell at me.

For the US –
All PvP realms become PvE and closed to new characters.
Sorry, your 100% Horde/Alliance realm isn't a PvP realm, lets stop pretending.
I'll…
— Tom Ellis (@FwoiblesWoW) September 11, 2025

Summarized Possible Changes Coming to Each Region

To summarize these possibly upcoming changes, each region will receive the following:

US Realms:

All PvP realms (except Grobbulus) converted to PvE and closed to new characters.
- Reason: Most are 100% one faction — no real PvP happening.
- High-capacity hardware has been added to handle the increased population.
Free Character Moves (FCMs) are offered from all realms to the new mega destination realm.
Grobbulus remains the only faction-balanced PvP server.
- FCMs are open to Grobbulus from previous PvP servers only.
- These transfers will be monitored to maintain faction balance on Grobbulus.

EU Realms:

All realms become PvE (no real PvP happening).
Free Character Moves (FCMs) are offered from all realms to the new mega destination realm.
FR, DE, and RU realms will merge into a single realm for each region.
- Merging these regions into (like in SoD/Anni) is possible based on community feedback.

KR/TW Realms:

Already consolidated, no changes needed

We are looking forward to these changes, as the Anniversary Realm mega-servers have been a great addition to help maintain population. It is also worth speculating why Classic Era servers are suddenly being merged… perhaps so these physical servers can be repurposed as future Classic+ realms?

As a reminder, these changes are not confirmed as of yet by Blizzard officially, so nothing is set in stone.