I am seeing so many guild recruiting claiming they can’t raid or will be raiding when shadowlands start due to current lack of players?
what I am wondering is a server with an active playerbase over 3000 which is more than classic wow had can have problems ?
well to sum it up as the title says, I am a returning player and I am wondering does realm matter anymore to someone interested in content higher than LFR ?? also what stuff can I do cross realm ?
You can do anything cross realm except join different realm guilds, Auction house is still different on each server. Mythic raiding is locked behind your server until so many guilds kill the last boss.
I wouldn’t want to be on a dead realm though as it’s hard to buy/sell mats on certain realms, On the plus side you have less issues on expansion launches on dead realms.
For alliance , join Silvermoon
for Horde , join Draenor
if you choose any other server you are hindering yourself because they simply have lower populations.
Server population is the most important factor and cross realm is just not a good fix at all , it barely helps dead servers to survive , if it even does that.
Yeah, people on Tarren Mill, aka the best realm you can join for high end raiding are really done out here since every server but draenor sucks 
I’m talking about the population numbers and Draenor definitely is the highest in that regard
REALM MATTERS!
I agree with Haurm that, by default, with no other information, Silvermoon if Alliance and Draenor if Horde will be the best - safest - choices for most Enflish-speaking players.
But Silvermoon and Draenor may not be ideal for everyone. As the largest realms, they sometimes get lag, and I think there were a couple of times this expansion at the start when the crowds showed up when there were queues? Not the long queues of bygone legend, but still short queues.
So if you are very sensitive to these things, you might look down a little, to Ravencrest for Alliance, or Tarren Mill for Horde.
Also, be aware that a few realms are unofficially colonised by non-English-speakers, so it’s wise, if venturing beyond these, to make a level 1, run to a city, and watch Trade Chat for a while to soak up the … errr … ambiance of the realm before you commit. 
Or you might want to Role-Play, in which case Argent Dawn is probably your preferred destimation regardlss of faction.
More ideas from
and sort by faction population if you really want to work it out for yourself, but don’t hesitate to ask for opinions here before making a final decision.
If you’re wanting to do mythic raiding or making your fortune on the AH, then I’d say that yes, realm really matters. If you’re looking for normal/heroic raiding, I think you’ll be able to find guilds who do that on any realm or can do it cross realm anyway.
Another thing to be aware of is faction balance - Draenor is a huge realm, but massively horde-dominated, so if you play there as Alliance you may have trouble finding guilds. Unfortunately, faction balance (and population) isn’t listed anywhere officially, although the wowprogress link Grainne posted will be helpful in that regard.
So he can have 4hour queues and lag for months at the beginning of an expansion? I can only imagine it’ll be 10x worse due to people being unemployed/stuck at home because of Covid restrictions.
Thats an outright lie.
It’s an outright lie that I transfered off Silvermoon because of lag and queues. Alright.
I know they increased server capacity, but the lag is still there at the beginning of expansions.
Low pop servers have one benefit, the trade chat isn’t being spammed with boost sellers
Plus you are more likely to be able to get whatever name you like on low-pop servers!
But yeah, the lack of boost spam is just so noticeable. My main realm is relatively low pop and alliance dominated so we get almost no boost spam. Switched to my alliance character on Sylvanas and the spam was unbearable… No wonder people leave trade chat!
If you want to pug you can go on any realm and use the group finder, if you want a guild you need to be more selective about what realm you choose to settle on.
Providing that mythic works the same as it did in BfA it will not be available for cross realm until the Hall of Fame is filled by both the Horde and the Alliance.
You can look for guilds that are recruiting on sites like wow progress
It can also give you an guideline as to how busy that realm
Many guilds will let you raid with them cross realm to trial (not all) but most will expect you to move to their realm. You can’t trade with players from other realms so it restricts some activities. Obviously loot can be traded and things like cauldrons are not realm dependent.
Before making any more to another realm I would strongly advise checking it out. You want a realm where you are the predominant faction to ensure you have a healthy realm population for guilds and big player pool to recruit from. We do everything in the open world in shards WM on or off (with the exception of RP realms) which is not necessarily realm dependent. So make a character, run it into the capital and see that there are people around you, check out the AH, if it’s a busy realm trade will be non stop boost spam, on dead realms not so much. Most of us have left trade, relegated trade to another tab or use an addon to filter out the ads.
Draenor barely had any latency and queues for this expansion even at start and it’s the “fastest selling” one so I wouldnt expect much from SL
I’ll admit, last time I was on Draenor was MoP launch, so don’t know about now. But I remember it being hugely overpopulated, and the latency was bad at peak times.
I did transfer off Silvermoon though at the beginning of BFA because the latency was insanity. I agree though you need a decent realm because of the AH. There’s some pretty dead AH on some servers.
< moving to draenor (new char) when I get back from vacation 
Excited to join the horde after having played alliance for too long.
Draenor and Silvermoon crashed on launch night for BfA, unlike the Legion launch which was super smooth. There were issues at the start of expansion where the Guild Bank and AH were practically unusuable but they’ve dealt with all that now. We do have some queues at peak times at the start of expansions.
It is all worth it (to me) to be on a high pop realm but Draenor is one of the busiest.
You can turn off trade chat though and everything else is better on a big server.
I come from a dead server and its like night and day.
Ye. On high servers I have a seperate chat that’s exactly the same as the general tab. Just without the trade checkbox checked. I do have to select it when I login though. And it does disable the trade chat for general sales.
I just turned off general and trade for the basic general chat window, nothing to do afterwards when logging in.