My situation is pretty common: I have my family of characters on an empty realm(s), It used to be pretty populated back in the day but now there is no suitable guild for me there, nothing to choose from ( it is not my first realm, at first I got trapped into “recomended”).
So to get a MMO experience I need to change realm or pay for transfer, so its either money or time to pay.
Obvious solution for Blizzard would be to merge my realm(s) with some other, but nothing happens and the problem is not new, especially on (A) side.
I highly doubt that merging realms is something very difficult, so its either "we don’t give a “f” situation or more likely a way to earn money on transfers.
Which is not polite and makes Blizz look bad but what can you expect in capitalism era…
But I personally think that they lose more on ppl leaving due to lack of living community (which is the thing that makes MMOs interesting mostly) than they make on transfers.
I love the game but Blizzard’s attitude to players makes me confused.
They seem to have recognised the problem still exists but don’t seem to be doing anything about it yet. I left a dead realm years ago and moved to a busy one at my own expense. I know they merged some realms but it doesn’t seem to be enough.
I know a lot of the merged realms are still suffering but I don’t know if they are looking into a different solution or whether more merges are planned at some stage.
I feel your pain.
I pretty much did the same some years back. Cost me a looooot of money, but I was on Ghostlands (horde) and it was dead. Transferred during Cata I think it was to Draenor and even though it gets queues at major patches etc - i’m not into world firsts so I just wait until it dies down a bit and then start.
Im surprised they haven’t got rid of realms entirely to be honest and just made them all “shards”
I moved to Draenor as well. I was on Hellscream, but it got too depressing logging on to an empty Orgrimmar every day. I believe they did eventually merge it with some other realms, but it was too late for me by then, I’d already gone. It’s the best thing I ever did tbh.
I do like server identity, the rankings for each realm etc. It’s nice to have your own localised competition and not just be one big eu list. One of the other issues with one server all sharded is that things like the AH and guild banks just can’t cope.
@Lenin: The situation is currently rather unclear. The original Connected Realms program was fairly effective (but NOT perfect). However, since that time there were server infrastructure changes and the original program was no longer applicable. Very long time ago we were told that they would be working on a new program to enable more connections and there were persistent rumours about there being tests on Brazilian server part of the US servers. However, nothing has materialized and efforts by myself and several other posters to get relevant questions into the Q&A-sessions have all failed.
So, unfortunately, for the overtly long current time being, I have not been able to tell others anything new at all. All we have gotten is “Silence, silence is golden…” 
Therefore… the options are very limited. Pay for a transfer, probably and to cut costs only a single character, reroll on a more active faction… or, if the situation feels hopeless, take a break / quit. Not a very happy list, sorry!
Anyway… how is Draenor (H)?
We dominate this server so it’s got a huge horde population. It’s also reasonably busy and has a good economy. There is plenty of stuff on the AH etc.
Our server did fall over on launch and we had a huge delay. Which was a shame for all of us waiting to play when it went live. There were queues at the start of the expansion but that has all gone now. The AH can be slow but it’s not too slow to use now.
There is a reasonable raiding scene, our realm 1st guild is also World 4th.
I read somewhere that they finished the new connection program a long time ago and Blizzard US won’t use it. People call Blizzard an uncaring company and only after their customers money, but high service prices and the unwillingness to connect realms seems to prove that. Some of the idiots at the top seem to think CRZs are the fix, when they probably don’t even understand the flaws in the technology.
I suppose the bosses huge salaries make the £19 seem cheap to them but to the average gamer it’s expensive.
Edit: What do I think it should be? £19 gets you 12 hours to make as many moves as you like, one move per character per year.
It should be their obligation to make game equally enjoyable for every customer, now they are just charging people money for their own bad work with realms.
We, players, are the ones who pay for the service and to make it work we should pay extra?
They have a fanbase and I’m among Warcraft fans, in any other project I’d say “Goodbye” first time I see something like this. But it won’t last forever.
It didn’t solve the problem, and you are gamer as well, if you happen to be on a good realm- very nice, but you are still on our side, no need to protect Blizz, like any other big company it is controlled by rich mons who only understand the money language, and will sell their mother if there is a good deal.
That’s why my point is that making MMO feel like MMO for everyone will make them more money in long term than that cheesy transfer cheating.
Draenor is full. Go away. Why blizz€€ard allows transfer to my realm?
Outland has a weird problem
It’s like 90% Alliance and the Horde side is dead
There are quite a few realms like that, but even 2:1 is already bad enough.
They are not fixing it because, why would you pay for a transfer if they solve this?
Well, as i see Blizzard don’t really cares about the realms anymore. They didn’t merged any realms since 2014. So yeah, as long as the players are paying for the transfer, Activi… i mean Blizzard don’t cares about it.
really sad to see that blizzard refuses to merge realms just so they can milk people out of their money from transfers.
well they ll never merge realms, its the PR thing which means realms are dying, they ll never admit that
Twilight Hammer appears to have both a healthy population and quite a lot of active guilds on horde side.
Well it doesn’t look how depressing forums are for TH and co, compared to healthy realms - it’s dead, compared to TH alliance side - alive, I see alliance like a rare animal in the zoo.
This is why we get busier and busier. People keep moving/re-rolling on the busier realms because theirs are neglected.