Hello and welcome!
I can only really echo what Thokk has said already.
WrA largely avoids server lore for the reasons they listed, as it’s been tried here or there and historically done poorly, so most long-term Accordians (myself included) will avoid it. I believe, but am not 100% sure, that MG does do some amount of server lore, but I do not play there so I cannot be more specific on that.
As for long-term story-based RP:
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You’ll want to browse the forums for that, as typically they’ll make advertisements or recruitments. You do not necessarily need to join a guild for that, but if you want to be more involved in some way (i.e. antagonist or a story device) I would strongly suggest a guild, as the public campaigns most likely will not have a spot for you with regard to anything more than a participant. Which is not necessarily a bad thing, of course! Things are just planned in advance.
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You mention not being hugely into walk-up RP, but I will say that all of the long-term RP I have found over the past 10 years first started through walk-ups. If you seek out people with TRP profiles that interest you and have a special note like “LF long-term” or something similar, that may be a worthwhile avenue too if you desire something long-term with fewer players than the public storylines often get.
I’m not sure what other tips you’d like, but you mention “inside info” and WrA and MG in the same sentence, so I’ll try to go over some general things I know about WrA (I do not play on MG, so my apologies):
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WrA focuses a lot of guild RP. It always has, but especially so in a post-BfA and post-SL world. Walk-ups are to be found (late US-time) in Duskwood for Alliance and… not sure where for Horde since I don’t play Horde, my apologies.
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If you are a discord user, you can find a WrA community project discord and other information about it at this link. You can find all sorts of RP, guilds, and events there and also here, on the forums.
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WrA has a very large RP project called Y40 that has started again for DF. You can find more information, including access to their discord, at this link.
And finally, as a general statement (likely for both servers):
There is a heavy reliance on discord servers for events, plots, and guilds. While you can often find enough information to get you started elsewhere, any linked discords are typically bound to get you much more information, for better or for worse.