Uh-oh. Trouble brews in Azeroth as it has recently been announced in the WoW Forums that the Beta-test realm for World of Warcraft will be split into two new realms. Blizzard's reason for this is to balance an overpopulated realm by splitting it into two instead.

The good news is that all your items will go with you once the realm is split. The bad news is that your Friends and Ignore list may go pfft unless the characters in the said lists happen to migrate with you to the same realm.

Blizzard is of course taking measures to avoid this by raising the level cap once The Burning Crusade is launched, and also by initiating free character moves to designated realms. However, if these don't work, then the split is imminent.

Unfortunately, not everyone is happy with Blizzard's plans as splitting a realm would also pretty much mean splitting guilds, groups of friends, parties, and so on... all of which took about two years to establish. At the moment, members of the WoW community are protesting the split, so it is still uncertain if Blizzard will go ahead with the drastic measure they are planning.