This is most likely why Molten has given their release date expectations of patch 4.3.4 in 3 months (Feburary 1st), compared to the 3-5 weeks release date expectation on WoW-Freakz.

After 4 months of the release of Mists of Pandaria, it seems as though the private server Pandashan has released its server on the 2nd of Janurary 2013.

The private server already has a booming 31k likes (compared to the lifetime 128k likes of Molten) and they have recently made a facebook event that have noted that the server has had over 4000 players online at a time.

Currently as Im typing up this article, I can see 1k players logged in to the US realm and 600 players logged into the French realm.

Monster-WoW seems to usually focus on fixing class bugs, seeing as though they used to do weekly class specific fixes.

Monster has just released a changelog on their main site for everyone to see the new fixes.

Monster-WoW has also re-added realm population statistics on their main site, and it seems as though their 4.3.4 realm, Ragnaros has about 40 of the total playerbase which isnt that bad.

Today, WoW-Freakz seems to have made numerous important fixes to the game, such as implementing vehicle mechanics, talent inspect, calender system and the new boss Alizabal at Baradin Hold.

Unfortunately they had to roll back a day due to a glitch in the achievement counter system.

They have now closed their Public Test Realm as its no longer needed, and Im sure it may have helped them a lot to fix exploits and major bugs.

Clustered Load Balancing system makes cross-realm battlegrounds and cross-realm raiding a possibility, among many other useful things such as decreased server loads, and a major stability improvement by changing realm crashes into separate instance or continent crashes.

Molten has upgraded all of their realms to more powerful servers, and from the Thank you threads on Molten, I can see that players seem to be very grateful.

Developers will be focused on porting 4.0.6a scripts over to 4.3.4 during this time.

More updates will come to the Wrath of the Lich King realms after the 4.3.4 upgrade on their Cataclysm realms.

This also has happened again when Monster decided to create a 4.2 realm, which turned out to be not popular at all, but now since 4.3.4 is the last Cataclysm patch, development is now active, both on private servers and on open source cores.

I have also noticed that theyve removed their population counters.

The rates seem to be about 30x on the PTR so it wont take a long time at all hitting level cap.

For more information on joining their public test realm, read this thread.

As a tradition, Molten has end of the year events and a promotion week for donating and voting.

Molten has announced an event schedule that includes over 3000 coins in prizes.

Coins are a currency that Molten uses for premium donated items.

To view the events and the schedule, visit this thread.

The prize pool will include over 2000 coins, 3000 points, unique and honorable in-game PvP titles, seasonal premium statuses, as well as in-game mounts such as Invincibles Reins and Magic Rooster Egg.

Theres no more 3-column or 2 column design, but now theres just the main page and the menu on top.

Molten has also been focusing on their Wrath of the Lich King realms as they have been scripting Ulduar, developing a cross realmclustered load balancing system (see below), and the recent release of the Icecrown Citadel Gunship Battle.

Molten Wow Cataclysm 4.3.4 Client