Anyone willing to tell me what the pros and cons are to high, medium, and low pop servers? I want a fresh start on a new character and I don’t want to be in Aeitish or Old Blanchy. I’d prefer US West realms because the server time us nearer to my local time but feel free to suggest any realms that would be good. Information on horde and alliance populations for these realms would be greatly appreciated but any information would be helpful
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Pros on med/low less competition on gathering nodes.
Cons less groups to join
And reverse those for high/full servers.
Thank you. Sound simple enough. Plus pop effects the competition on the ah or selling in the overworld
Pro’s for high pop/full servers=
*More people to play with, might be able to find a SFK group on your alt.
*More items on the AH to buy instead of having like 3 pages.
*Easier to sell liquid items, such as herbs/ore, potions, etc because more buyers.
*Cheaper materials due to competition.
Pro’s for Medium/low pop:
*Less competition for nodes out in the world.
*Less chance of a login queue time.
*Less chance of being ganked if on PvP server.
Cons for Mega/high pop:
*Chance to have login queues, could be hours or days after a major patch or expansion.
*Your materials sell for less.
*You get undercut easier
*Higher chance of being ganked if on PvP server
Cons of Medium/low pop:
*No one to group with, especially pre-max level.
*Items you need may not be on the Auction house. If they are, they are expensive.
*Chance to be merged with other servers that may not speak your language even.
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Good servers are all locked to new accounts. So unless you had a toon made previously you are SOL. Good luck.
people are the best thing about this game
people are the worst thing about this game
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I play on Maladarthsomething (NEW) and when i wake up at 3:30am central time zone, there are less than 8 people in dalaran and even fewer in the major horde cities.
Advantage = can snipe all the rare stuff early in the morning since there really isnt anyone on.
Negative = cant do any daily dungeons unless you can be on during prime time of 11am to 6pm central time zone. Outside that window on horde side… good luck even trying to complete your daily heroic.
Its like a single player mmo
My take on pros/cons of low pop server where there is zero to minimum auction house activities for economy is,
Pros:
No bots
No goldsellers
No fast way to gain wealth
No shortcut to elite toon build
100% dependency on friends and guildies for help/quest items/crafting…etc
cons:
Feeling of having inferior character and being piss poor compared to other servers, if that bothers you.
Just to put it in perspective. Playing on high pop server, I was able to get to 1000g by level 20. On a low-pop server, I barely had enough money to buy an epic mount at lev60. But so much more rewarding playing on low pop server.
To add to what others have said already, another difference between low nad high pop is that on a low pop server, you’re much more likely to have repeated encounters with other players. On a high pop server, everybody is just another face in a very large crowd.
I’ll let you decide if that’s an advantage or not 
Nothing was in the game description Tver you have to deal with other people lol.
Joking aside, %70 of the reason I play is to play with others
Yeah I played on the RP server for a week. It was a waste. Completely trash AH and no one doing any content.
Pretty much sums it up in a nutshell
I have played on Deviate Delight, a server with a population never above 2k raiders at most, and Grobbulus now, effectively a megaserver. So i have a good idea on the drawbacks and benefits to both.
Low pop servers:
Benefits:
Rares easy to find and kill or tame
Easier to farm, less competition over resources
Small community feeling - reputation matters. More like original classic servers in feel.
If on a pvp server, ganking is less pervasive.
In Vanilla, usually were easier to rank on. Smaller less competitive top pool.
No queues or layers (if thats important to you).
Drawbacks:
Small selection of raiding guilds
Very small (if any) arena scene.
Hard to form groups without RDF.
Not huge pug scene.
Economy was very strange. Often you’d lack common materials on the AH or the prices were way inflated. Some consumes though were cheaper than megaservers like terocone.
Large servers:
Benefits:
Easy to form groups for group content
More partners for arena
Wider selection of raiding guilds
Economy is always healthy.
Drawbacks
Queues at the start of expansions or peak hours
Auction House lag (and lag in general).
Lots of competition over rares/nodes/etc. Harder to open world farm
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Check out the wowclassicpop website for realm population.
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