As you might imagine from a game of its size, World of Warcraft has been localized in quite a few languages. In order to keep everything running smoothly, as well as to ensure the players can actually understand each other, Blizzard implemented language-based servers all the way back in Vanilla and has maintained them ever since. However, according to the latest announcement, it would appear the same will not be happening with World of Warcraft: Classic.  

"For Classic, we’re planning on not splitting up realms by language. This has its advantages and disadvantages, but overall, we think that it’s the best starting point for WoW Classic," reads the developer update. "An exception will be made for the Russian language, which will have separate realms due to its reliance on the Cyrillic Alphabet. For technical reasons this will also mean Russian is going to have its own separate game client, similar to what happened in The Burning Crusade."

While everything will most likely end up being fine, as proven by all of the various games and MMOs that have purely international servers, this decision does bring with it some potential problems. Most notably, what happens if a server becomes the unofficial gathering place for people that speak a certain language? In small enough numbers this isn't a problem, but should the community ever become large, it could result in some serious communication problems between the players on that server.

That said, I can also understand why Blizzard is trying to avoid segregating players too much. They have absolutely no idea how many people will continue playing Classic months and months after release, and with each language requiring three different server types, things could result in a genuinely poor gameplay experience for anyone that accidentally joins one of the smaller servers. 

Whatever the case may be, it'll be certain be interesting to see how all of this pans out once World of Warcraft: Classic releases on August 27th!