Realms

Each realm is a complete version of the game world with its own players. Before you create a character you pick a realm, and that character can only be played there. Realms run on physical server machines, which is why players use the words realm and server for the same thing. Every realm has a name, usually taken from a character, place or group of the Warcraft story.

One account can hold up to 60 characters spread over any realms. What happens on one realm, such as a realm-first achievement, does not affect the others.

PvP realms disappeared from the modern game when War Mode arrived with Battle for Azeroth. Any character of level 20 or higher on any realm can now switch PvP in the open world on or off in a capital city.

Realms are grouped into regions: Americas & Oceania, Europe, China, Taiwan and Korea. Accounts belong to one region. You cannot move characters to another region, invite or talk to players there, and cross-realm features do not reach across regions. European realms are also split by language, and fully localized ones show game text and names in that language.

The realm list shows each realm's population as Recommended, Low, Medium, High or Full. Recommended realms are the ones Blizzard thinks will give a new player the best start. You cannot make a new character on a Full realm unless you already have one there.

At launch in 2004 you could mostly only meet players of your own realm. Many of those limits are gone today:

• Connected Realms: several realms work as one shared realm.
• Cross-realm zones: quiet areas can bring in players from other realms, which helps while leveling on small realms.
• Battlegrounds, arenas and the Dungeon Finder mix players from different realms.
• Friends added through Battle.net (Real ID or BattleTag) can be invited to a party from another realm; the whole party then plays on the leader's realm.
• Guilds can include members from other realms since The War Within.

Characters cannot travel to another realm through the game itself. To move one you use a paid Character Transfer or, when Blizzard offers it, a free character migration.

At first WoW had its own separate accounts. With the Battle.net 2.0 revamp in March 2009 they were merged into Battle.net accounts, and from November 11, 2009 Battle.net became required. It lets you chat with friends on your list across realms, across factions and even in other Blizzard games.