WoW Circle is opening a fresh Legion 7.3.5 x5 realm today. The network's own news pages date the opening to October 17 2026 at 19:00 Moscow (GMT+3), which is 16:00 UTC, and it is the first of a planned run of three.
What the project's own pages say
- Realm: WoW Circle Legion 7.3.5 x5, listed as a PVP realm. Rates are x5 experience and x2 for everything else.
- Content opens in stages, beginning with patch 7.0, in what the project describes as a faster rollout than its usual pace.
- Custom additions named in the announcement: a PvE spectator, an arena spectator, and a RePlay arena for reviewing matches. A VIP account is also listed, which the post says will not be available at launch.
- Every "first on the server" achievement title will be handed out.
- At our read the new world was still in open beta on the existing x4 realm ("Текущий статус: ОБТ в рамках x4"), with registration and a personal account page already live.
A series of fresh realms, not one
The Legion opening is the first of three. A September 30 announcement describes a "new format" of consecutive fresh realms:
- Legion x5: October 17 2026.
- Battle for Azeroth x5: planned for around December 2026.
- Shadowlands x5: planned for around February 2027.
All three carry the same x5 experience and x2 other rates, and each opens its content in stages. The project says it is not forcing merges, and that the new realms are meant to become long-term homes for older characters once their content is complete.
Where this sits in the tracker
WoW Circle is already tracked as a long-running multi-expansion network, so this adds a realm rather than a new project. As with every gate in this stretch, the population band stays unknown until a per-realm counter is readable. We will record whether the gate opened, dated, against the project's own status pages.
Gate result, read at source
We read the project's own status page at 18:58 UTC on October 17, about three hours after the 16:00 UTC gate, and the realm is up:
- Legion 7.3.5 x5: online, 1,978 players, with a reported uptime of 0 days 2 hours 50 minutes at the read, which places its start within a few minutes of the announced opening. No queue, and an average server latency of 10 ms.
- The older Legion 7.3.5 x4 realm read 77 online at the same time, and the 7.3.5 line listed 2,055 online across both realms.
- Network-wide, the main logon aggregate read 20,755 online across 6,319,547 accounts, with 34,071 players in the last 24 hours and 328 accounts created that day. The 7.3.5 line alone reported 606,686 accounts, 2,055 online and 820 accounts created that day, which is the clearest sign yet that the new realm is pulling fresh registrations.
The per-realm figure is now readable: just under 2,000 concurrent players within three hours of opening, on the operator's own counter. WoW Circle's entry already carries a large band on the network total, and this reading confirms that the new realm is not a token launch.
SOURCES: WoW Circle news "Открытие Legion 7.3.5 x5 17.10.26" (published October 1 2026) and "Открытие новых серверов Legion, BFA, Shadowlands" (published September 30 2026), both read October 17 2026; the project's realm list and status page, read October 17 2026 at 18:58 UTC. Related: the launch calendar.