Choosing a realm to play World of Warcraft on used to be a simple process. Not only are there countless realm options now, but there’s also a new tier, Seasonal, that coincides with the Season of Discovery.
Don’t mistake regular WoW Classic realms for SoD realms when you log into the game; SoD is a seasonal game mode, and its servers are also seasonal. If you don’t have a friend waiting for you in a specific realm, your best bet is to choose an SoD server based on your location and the current server population.
You’ll find more players to team up with in a busy realm, and finding farming opportunities shouldn’t be a problem if you know how to change layers.
Want to level up faster in WoW Classic? Try out these Zygor in-game guides
WoW Classic server populations for Season of Discovery servers
The website IronForge.pro maintains trackers of Season of Discovery server active character populations based on raids uploaded to the site Warcraft Logs. While this doesn’t necessarily give a 100 percent accurate figure for each server, it does give us an idea of which servers are more populated.
There are a total of 14 seasonal servers between Europe and the U.S., which are the only regions tracked on IronForge. There are eight in the U.S., with two specifically set aside for players in Australia, while there are eight in EU, with two set aside for Russia.
Here are the current active character populations for each SoD server as of February 2024, according to IronForge:
| Server Name | Server Type | Alliance Population | Horde Population | Total Population |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Crusader Strike US | PvP RP | 13,015 | 12,160 | 25,175 |
| Living Flame US | PvP | 11,051 | 9,203 | 20,254 |
| Lone Wolf US | PvP | 10,509 | 9,961 | 20,470 |
| Wild Growth US | PvE | 12,305 | 5,677 | 17,982 |
| Shadowstrike US (AU) | PvP | 3,528 | 3,175 | 6,703 |
| Chaos Bolt US | PvP RP | 1,823 | 1,290 | 3,113 |
| Lava Lash US | PvE RP | 1,679 | 872 | 2,551 |
| Penance US (AU) | PvE | 591 | 172 | 763 |
| Living Flame EU | PvP | 12,888 | 12,789 | 25,677 |
| Lone Wolf EU | PvP | 13,041 | 11,771 | 24,812 |
| Wild Growth EU | PvE | 12,506 | 5,677 | 18,183 |
| Crusader Strike EU | PvP RP | 5,402 | 5,877 | 11,279 |
| Chaos Bolt EU | PvP | 2,863 | 2,702 | 5,565 |
| Lava Lash EU | PvE RP | 1,008 | 261 | 1,269 |
| Penance EU (RU) | PvE | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Shadowstrike EU (RU) | PvP | N/A | N/A | N/A |
Looking at the numbers overall, a few noticeable figures emerge. PvP servers in general are overwhelmingly more popular among Season of Discovery players, which is a similar trend seen in normal WoW Classic and Wrath Classic servers as well. On average, WoW Classic SoD servers see a split of about 60 percent Alliance players and 40 percent Horde players.
With the exception of the Crusader Strike U.S. server, RP servers in general are less popular than the non-roleplaying ones.
