Hello everyone, im a returning player, took about a yr away. I have recently returned and been playing on my 4 was max toons, now i gotta grind out the next 10 lvls. Ive relized after playing the horde for about 20 yrs, they just dont feel the same anymore. The horde isnt the horde anymore. With that being said, i figured id give alliance a try, specially becuase alot of the ppl i se in cut sense with them mean nothing to me cuz i only know the main ppl, like the king and Jaina, greymane, bronzebeard, but i dont know the history or story of the alliance cuz its was horde pr nothing lol. Im looking for a swrver to start fresh on, that has a low pop, but not to low, the pc i got rn works for the game but when i get around to many players, its lag heaven, so only reason i want a low pop alliance server. I have tried looking thru the wow server site to see but dont know how accurate that really is.
Welcome back!
Yeah, the devs really have given themselves a pass there to not do necessary optimization. 
This
https://www.wowprogress.com/realms/rank/us
and this
https://raider.io/realms/north-america
are the best you’re going to get, and they’re pretty good, and they say pretty much the same thing. RaiderIO also lists realms by zone, which may be helpful for ping.
Your best bet is to locate a suspect realm and make a character on it - Allied Races start at level 10 in Stormwind so they’re ideal. Get some kind of feel for the chat and the population. Remember, zones are coalesced now, so it’s no longer justthepopulation of your realm, but for sure, smaller realms will have less people, and therefore less lag, in Dornogal.
Depends if you are East or West. I’m on East so if I log on to a West server I lagg silly.
Retail at this point for new or old returning players is worthless. They’ve taken all the lore and reason starting out small and exploring the story to max level. There are so many portals and zones now that if you haven’t been on the train you’ll be lost to what’s going on. You can also start a classic character and go from there if you want a story. I believe you can also “with real money” take them from classic to retail.
I’ve stuck with it the whole time. I’ve been here since BC. It hasn’t been pretty, and sometimes it’s pretty sad, where retail has headed compared to the old days. I’ve made characters on classic BC and I’m happier. I do jump on retail to get some of the newer items, mount and such, holidays, and then right back to classic lol
Sad because most of my retail characters are veterans 