Yes it was. For almost a decade, it was listed as high pop. on the in game login screen. I would know, I spent quite a bit of real life money transferring to Whisperwind because of it being listed as a high pop. server for as long as it was. It’s kind of the reason I transferred (also, it had an Alliance population within the 10 ten of all NA servers). I’ll take Blizzard’s classification of a high pop server over your own.
Also in the first decade of this game, Whisperwind was routinely locked because of its high population. There were realms created as destination realms for Whisperwind’s massive population (comparatively at that point in the game). Source: people in my guild that played during Vanilla, also Wowpedia and WoWWiki’s archive. Not sure why you’re so confident in Whisperwind never being high pop. when that is the most false thing I’ve ever read on these forums in a long time.
Also: where did you come up with the notion that I hate rIO?
Maybe hate wasn’t the best word, but you definitely said it was inaccurate.