Your MoP Classic Server Is Closing — Here’s Where You’ll End Up

With next week’s maintenance and patch deploy on September 23rd, Mists of Pandaria realms will be merged, with only 1 PvE and 1 PvP realm available for players to choose from in each region. This is a quick follow-up from the previous discussion by Ellis on social media, as they broached the topic to see players’ feedback less than a week ago.


Realm Changes & Free Moves for Mists of Pandaria Classic

Hello everyone,

As we were recently discussing our long terms plans for Mists of Pandaria Classic’s realms, we all felt that the “mega realm” direction used to great success in Season of Discovery and then Classic Era Anniversary has led to an almost universally improved player experience, with availability for grouping at all hours, Auction House health and a massive pool of players for Guilds to pull from. We believe it will also have such a positive effect for Mists of Pandaria Classic too.

Since these moves are very disruptive we felt that starting this process sooner rather than later would be for the best, even though we know many of you are currently quite happy with the health of your specific realms, so we appreciate it if this feels sudden or uncalled for, but we do think you’ll enjoy the results once the dust settles!

With next week’s maintenance and patch deploy on September 23rd we will be enabling Free Character Transfers on US Mists of Pandaria Classic realms to the destination realm Pagle. The PvP realms in the region will also be re-flagged as PvE to better reflect their current faction war status. Players on previously PvP realms wishing to engage in a PvP experience once more will have the option of moving to the Grobbulus (RP-PvP) realm, this realm will also have forced faction balancing enabled. This unique realm has withstood the test of time and remained a hot bed of world PvP, and we will be working to make sure that it remains faction balanced. If you wish to get a taste of what Mists of Pandaria might have looked like on a contested PvP realm, this will be your chance!

Full list of Free Character Moves:

Faerlina → Pagle
Mankrik → Pagle
Benediction → Pagle
Atiesh → Pagle
Whitemane → Pagle
Bloodsail Buccaneers → Pagle
Sulfuras → Pagle
Windseeker → Pagle
Azuresong → Pagle
Westfall → Pagle
Old Blanchy → Pagle
Ashkandi → Pagle

Faerlina → Grobbulus (RP-PvP)
Benediction → Grobbulus (RP-PvP)
Whitemane → Grobbulus (RP-PvP)

The AU realm Arugal will also switch to PvE to enable both factions to play in this region. AU realm health will be monitored and your feedback appreciated, we understand that merging AU realms into US realms results in a significant rise in latency so we will wait till this merge is overwhelmingly requested.

Pagle & Grobbulus will have their realm caps increased to effectively unlimited. No additional latency or performance issues are expected as a result of this consolidation of players. The layering/sharding systems in the game distribute load regardless of a realms capacity. Expected times to process your character transfers will vary greatly depending on demand, we have seen previously under extreme load this process take several hours so plan accordingly, under normal circumstance the processing time is 2-5 minutes.

Transfers to Pagle are not time limited, you and your guilds may take as much time as you wish to plan your moves, you may also remain on your original realms if you wish, but the source realms will be closed to new players and will slowly shrink. We have seen overall increased satisfaction and engagement when players are on these larger “mega realms” and we believe this will offer you the best experience for the rest of your time in Mists of Pandaria.

Transfers to Grobbulus may be halted for either faction temporarily without warning to ensure that faction balance is maintained, if you plan on transferring with a group we would recommend you all do so at once.

We thank you for joining us on this Classic journey and look forward to seeing this amazing community united together.

Mists of Pandaria Server Transfers in the US Region

A quick recap of where US realms will be able to transfer to:

PvE Servers

  • Faerlina → Pagle
  • Mankrik → Pagle
  • Benediction → Pagle
  • Atiesh → Pagle
  • Whitemane → Pagle
  • Bloodsail Buccaneers → Pagle
  • Sulfuras → Pagle
  • Windseeker → Pagle
  • Azuresong → Pagle
  • Westfall → Pagle
  • Old Blanchy → Pagle
  • Ashkandi → Pagle

PvP Servers

  • Faerlina → Grobbulus (RP-PvP)
  • Benediction → Grobbulus (RP-PvP)
  • Whitemane → Grobbulus (RP-PvP)

MoP Classic Realm Transfers in the EU Region

Likewise, Blizzard is conducting similar moves in the EU region with more details indicated in the official blog posted linked below.


Hello everyone,

As we were recently discussing our long terms plans for Mists of Pandaria Classic’s realms, we all felt that the “mega realm” direction used to great success in Season of Discovery and then Classic Era Anniversary has led to an almost universally improved player experience, with availability for grouping at all hours, Auction House health and a massive pool of players for Guilds to pull from. We believe it will have such a positive effect for Mists of Pandaria Classic too. Since these moves are very disruptive we felt that starting this process sooner rather than later would be for the best, even though we know many of you are currently quite happy with the health of your specific realms, so we appreciate it if this feels sudden or uncalled for, but we do think you’ll enjoy the results once the dust settles!

With next weeks maintenance and patch deploy on September 24th we will be enabling Free Characters Transfers on multiple EU Mists of Pandaria Classic realms. The PvP realms in the region will also be re-flagged as PvE to better reflect their current faction war status. Source realms will be closed to new players.

EN
Firemaw → Mirage Raceway
Gehennas → Mirage Raceway
Golemagg → Mirage Raceway
Pyrewood Village → Mirage Raceway
Hydraxian Waterlords → Mirage Raceway
Nethergarde Keep → Mirage Raceway
Mograine → Mirage Raceway
Earthshaker → Mirage Raceway
Giantstalker → Mirage Raceway
Ashbringer → Mirage Raceway
Thekal → Mirage Raceway
Jin’do → Mirage Raceway

DE
Lakeshire → Everlook
Venoxis → Everlook
Razorfen → Everlook
Patchwerk → Everlook
Transcendence → Everlook

FR
Sulfuron → Auberdine
Amnennar → Auberdine

RU
Chromie → Flamegor

ES
Mandokir → Mirage Raceway (EN)

Destination realms will have their realm layout changed and player cap increased to effectively unlimited. No additional latency or performance issues are expected as a result of this consolidation of players. Expected times to process your character transfers will vary greatly depending on demand, we have seen previously under extreme load this process take several hours so plan accordingly, under normal circumstance the processing time is 2-5 minutes.

We thank you for joining us on this Classic journey and look forward to seeing this amazing community united together.

This change makes Mists of Pandaria realms function similarly to 20th Anniversary Realms, with all players being on either a PvE or PvP server. Will this help retain Mists of Pandaria’s player base, allowing players to find groups and guilds much more easily?