With the release of the new Oceanic realms, there have been large queues waiting to create a character on them. Blizzard have released the following statement regarding the queues.

When a new realm is released, the player cap is purposely set fairly low. This is done to give players ample time to disperse. As performance issues often occur when too many players are congregated in the same new areas of the world. Also, as many of you know, when a realm queues, character creation is disabled. Which is what you're seeing now.

The announcement of these new realms caused much in the way of excitement, driving a great deal of players to creating new characters on these realms. If you're interested in a new start, and you cannot currently create a character, or are waiting in a queue -- please wait patiently. Eventually, the caps will be raised, and the new realm novelty will wear itself thin.

You should also keep in mind that we chose this particular time to release the new realms so that they'd fill up primarily with Oceanic players, rather than North American players. Your best interests were not only kept in mind, they fueled the decision.

And so everyone is aware, what's happening here now would've occurred no matter what time we released the new realms. It's because we announced them several hours before we opened them up publicly. Which we usually refrain from doing. However, Oceanic players have been most persistent in requesting updates, and thus they were provided.