October 16 was the three-check day our launch calendar flagged, and two of the three gates sat on the same minute. uWoW's Mists of Pandaria x10 and Nozdor's DUNE were both scheduled to open at 19:00 Moscow, 16:00 UTC, and both projects' own countdowns have now elapsed. The third, lordaeron.eu, holds its gate at 19:00 CEST, 17:00 UTC, an hour later.
uWoW opens a Mists of Pandaria x10 realm
uWoW's own announcement, published September 9 2026, dates the new realm to Friday October 16 2026 at 19:00 MSK. It is Mists of Pandaria on the 5.4.8 client, level cap 90, x10 experience, with content opened in phases rather than all at once.
- First raid: October 21, when Mogu'shan Vaults opens on normal difficulty, with heroic to follow.
- The stated path runs Mogu'shan Vaults into Heart of Fear and on to the Terrace of Endless Spring.
- uWoW's network also runs Legion realms at x100 and x5. Its own total online read 4,353 (3,399 plus 387) at our check, which is the existing Legion side and does not include the new realm.
Nozdor opens DUNE
Nozdor's DUNE page describes a fresh WotLK 3.3.5a realm at x1 to x5 rates with optional hardcore. Its structured event data gives the start as 2026-10-16T19:00+03:00.
- Everyone starts at level 1. Existing characters stay on the account and begin Dune fresh.
- Hardcore is opt-in: you choose a challenge at character creation, and skipping it is fine.
- Account-wide mounts carry over; most other collections do not.
- A separate open-beta realm exists for players who want to test with gear before committing.
- Nozdor's main realm is WotLK x5 with 24 custom races, 1v1 arena and no pay-to-win. Its site showed an "Online: 500+" figure at our read.
lordaeron.eu holds its gate at 17:00 UTC
The third launch is lordaeron.eu, gated to 19:00 CEST (17:00 UTC). Two realms share one account and one shop: Lordaeron, an Epic Progressive realm at x5 stepping Vanilla, then TBC, then WotLK, and Rimeheart, a custom Northrend realm with five three-month phases that opens with a two to three week Phase 0 prelude. We will record the result of that gate the same day, exactly as with the other two.
Addendum: the October 16 gates all opened (recorded October 17)
All three October 16 launches are now confirmed open, each from its own first-party pages:
- uWoW, Mists of Pandaria x10. The project's own statistics page lists Pandaria x10 as a live realm with 492 players and an uptime of about 40 minutes at our read on October 17, alongside its Legion realms.
- Nozdor, DUNE. Nozdor's DUNE page now states that Dune is already open ("Dune уже открыт") and shows 818 players in game across the project, with a DUNE announcement thread on its own forum.
- lordaeron.eu, Rimeheart. We read the project's own status feed at
/api/server/status, and both Lordaeron and Rimeheart returnedonline: true, with realm process start times of 04:00 and 04:01 UTC on October 17. The gate was 19:00 CEST (17:00 UTC) on October 16, and the site's static banner still carried the pre-open countdown when we looked, so the live status feed, not the banner, is what we record.
One honest note on timing, because we promised the result the same day: our own checks landed the following day rather than the same evening, as the scheduled probe did not survive the night. The results are recorded now, dated rather than backfilled.
What we record, and what we do not
The tracker grades reachability and first-party evidence, not a listing site's count. None of the three publishes a clean per-realm player counter we can rate today, so their population bands stay unknown until one is readable. What is verified is narrower and sturdier: each project's own page states the date, the time and the realm, and each site answered our request.
SOURCES: uWoW announcement page for the Mists of Pandaria x10 opening (published September 9 2026) and its statistics page, read October 16 and October 17 2026; Nozdor's DUNE page and its event structured data, read October 16 2026, and its DUNE page, re-read October 17 2026; lordaeron.eu homepage and realm pages, read October 16 2026, and its status feed at /api/server/status, read October 17 2026. Related: the launch calendar, the October dates calendar, and the Lordaeron name-collision note.