For all intents and purposes, Alliance engagement is (unless I’m otherwise misinformed) at a historic low. I’m positive WrA might have a couple raid focused guilds ally side but from what I read (as I’m inactive at this point) the situation is not bountiful.
I can’t speak on the community but if it’s about the same as it always has been then you’ll find at least as much help as hinderance providing you can take the time to navigate / network to your goal.
I also can’t speak directly re; RP but it’s always been guild favoured for breaking into it. That said, despite the lull it seems we’ve still got planners concocting events and the walk up scene seems about as sporadically plentiful as ever so you’ll probably see and absorb it passively too.
Joined this server years ago and haven’t looked back. People (for the most part) are typically friendly. I can’t speak to Alliance side of things but Horde is alive and well. Plenty of guilds doing raid content and pvp, and Orgrimmar and SMC are usually pretty busy in the evening. Anything you’re looking for you should have an easy time finding. Good luck and welcome to the server!
Welcome to WrA! You might want to check out the sticky, which includes links to several guilds on the server.
There’s also server events going on almost every weekend, and most weeks. Most of them are cross faction, too! Many are advertised on the forums, but there’s a couple of social media pages that keep track of them…
There are plenty of groups going for AoTC.
The Seventy Third just got theirs yesterday from what I know.
Alliance side is in a bit of a slump right now, but is still high population with plenty of walkup available even at weird hours. You won’t see extreme crowds outside prime time hours, but it’s not hard to find guilds/randoms to play with.