After a long time, I’m back to playing World of Warcraft. The first thing I noticed is that there is an open world interconnected between realms. But how specifically is it connected? I’m on the Argent Dawn (RP) realm and when I participate in Superbloom, for example, so few people join that we don’t even get the higher rewards. Is it because only RP realms are linked together, whereas I would see far more players on normal realms? (I have War Mode on, and I’m not sure if that plays a role either.)
Yes RP realms don’t get sharded with other realms unless they are also RP realms. You can invite others in from realms or you can be invited onto other realm shards.
Connected realms is something different. They are essentially merged servers. You can easily see what realms are connected on sites like raider io. Despite having a different ‘realm’ at the end of your character name, you are basically all just one realm.
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So does that mean that if I start playing on, say, the Silvermoon realm, I’ll meet a lot more people, since I’ll also see people from normal realms? (Since more people play on normal realms than RP realms.)
The game shards normal realms as needed. So it can seem much busier but you can also get a quiet shard ofc.
Maybe someone can invite you over to Silvermoon to see.
Not a lot on RP realm.
Any non-RPer will have been brought there by being invited to a group by someone on your realm.
Or if you join a group and you are taken to their realm (which may be normal).
Sharding is how they balance loads, each shard is either splitting up a highly populated realm into several smaller groups to avoid overcrowding Or it’s merging several quieter realms to avoid empty worlds.
Shards will not mix PVP and non-PVP nor RP and non-RP, it will keep players of the same type together.
So the goal is to balance the open world experience for all players? And so if I started playing on Silvermoon instead of Argent Dawn (with Silvermoon having 3x the population of Argent Dawn), I wouldn’t actually see more players than I already do?
I’d try WM off first and then see if it improves 
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