That’s pretty similar to my experience. I play on Windseeker, which is on the Mankrik cluster.
You won’t see the huge crowds of people like in 2020, but that was never really the type of population the game was designed for anyway.
I don’t typically check or queue for BGs outside of the bonus weekend, but I see that they’re going sometimes. Whichever BG is the bonus is where you’ll find PvP’ers on any given weekend. I don’t think there’s much low-level BG’s going on.
I don’t have any problem finding groups when that’s what I want to do, and I usually play as DPS Arms (sometime I tank 5mans). I do Strat Live, UD, UBRS, and Dire Maul pretty frequently. I see a lot of Deadmines groups, Gnomer, and Scarlet Monastery regualarly. Sometimes people have a harder time finding groups for dungeons like RFK and RFD. There’s a lot of BRD and Scholo runs, but I usually don’t go for those.
One thing to keep in mind is that MMOs, including WoW, weren’t really designed with the intention that every player gets everything they want immediately. Sometimes it takes longer to get a group for an obscure dungeon. That was my experience in Vanilla as well, even on Bleeding Hollow which was a pretty big realm.
I’ve been working on my level 30is hunter, and I regularly see other players leveling, questing, and farming out in the world. One of my favorite places is the yeti cave outside of Southshore, and I rarely have the whole cave to myself. If there’s more than one other player in there, I’ll usually go somewhere else. Same goes with farming spots on my main: usually there are other players at the felcloth spots and the zombie fields in the Plaguelands.
There’s still boosting, but that’s something I’ve always just ignored, so I can’t really speak to that aspect.