Have you ever come across some oddly named World of Warcraft servers lately? You know, the ones named after numbers (E.g. Server 3, Server 4, etc.)? wow forum member Whyamisofat has, and the player wanted to know what those were all about.

Fortunately, Blizzard blue poster Bornakk offered an explanation. It seems these servers are part of Blizzard’s contingency plan:

We continuously prepare ourselves to meet the needs of our player base and part of this means having extra realms available if they are needed. We have put a lot of effort into the growth of all of our realms since the launch of world of warcraft and we always want to be ready for any situation that comes up.

It’s an understandable move, considering that wow server issues tend to rear ugly heads from time to time. While these aren’t exactly the new realms that certain players have been clamoring for, they can at least serve as backup in the event that things go awry.