Same here. I can't help but wonder if they just want to throw all million AP holders in and watch everything crumble. Then they can laugh and say "THAT is why we were waiting. We did what you wanted, you happy now?"

Ok they wouldn't be smug like that, but that little imp in the back of my head keeps WHISPERING things to me.

THINGS.

Unless... the server architecture that's being tested is a genuine cloud. [Pure Speculation Follows]

If they redesigned their server architecture to use a genuine cloud infrastructure, they could essentially have a "single" server environment that simply (yeah, I know, "ha, simply") expands as needed, drawing more resources as demand increases, and "collapsing" when the load is less. They *could* test that using the large beta pool of users at the same time as testing the game.

If the test was successful, they could roll that out to the existing pool of servers in stages. First, virtualize the servers (if they haven't already) and assign each its own space in the cloud. Eventually, you could consolidate the servers with the end goal being having no "realms" at all. Just one big game space.

Hm... I'd love to see their datacenter.

@ Glaras

Blizzard servers = Skynet!? So Skynet killed us all because it died in PvP to a human rogue.

The "cloud" is nothing but a new marketing gimmick for outsourcing. It isn't a technology.

I'm assuming the performance requirements for WoW servers requires physicals boxes instead of virtualized environments.

When you need performance, virtualization is not the way to go.