According to RealmPop, Stormrage is the biggest US PvE Alliance server by a large margin: 50% larger than Proudmoore, twice that of Lightbringer.
I moved a few characters to Stormrage last spring and it's crazy how much stuff is going on there at any time of day, especially if you're used to a low/med-pop server. I just joined the WarcraftPets guild a few days ago (my shammy, Shaggi), and it's nice having people to talk pets with.
If you're interesting in xferring or rolling a new char there, there are both upsides and downsides to the overcrowding:
Upsides:
- As mentioned, the Auction House is overflowing with pets, and both the prices and selection tend to be a lot better than most servers. If you wait long enough, the high-end pet you're looking for will probably show up at a decent price.
- Additionally, if you just want to sell stuff on the AH to fund your pet buying, you'll have no problem selling basic trade goods consistently, as long as you price competively. You can sell ore, herbs, cloth, leather, gems, etc, as fast as you can farm it up.
- Celestials/Ordos kills are never a problem. Ordos probably dies 20x on Tuesdays and the Celestials die constantly, which I've found is a rarity on a lot of low/med pop servers. And killing rares on Timeless Isle is comically easy (with a downside, which I'll get to).
- If you're looking to do flexraid, or older retro raids for xmog, there are always people running everything: ICC, Ulduar, Dragon Soul, Firelands, etc. Same goes for heroic scenarios, challenge modes or random event stuff like the legendary quest events.
Downsides:
- Farming highly sought-after wild pets is almost futile. Felwood perpetually has a dozen people furiously flying around the Minfernal area as if one was about to spawn any second, which they never do. It's bad enough there are always Stormrage people farming it, but the area CRZ's with like three other servers, so I eventually gave up and farmed mine on a low pop server (which I also did for my Snowy Owl and Unborn Valks).
- Valley chat and Timeless Isle chat is everything you hated about Barrens chat, just with the volume cranked to 11. It's like a radio station with nothing but insane people jabbering angrily at each other. Which is occasionally funny, but more often makes you want to weep for the human race.
- If you're doing Timeless Isle stuff, there's a lot of competition for the elites for the weekly and daily quests, which you might not be used to on lower pop servers. And rares die INSTANTLY. Like, you'll see a rare 100 yards away and it'll be dead in 5 seconds before you can tap it. Although I'm not sure this is really a downside, you just have to get used to everyone running Raretimer and camp a few minutes if there's a rare you really want to kill.
- Because the pool of players is so large, a lot of people set ridiculous requirements for groups. LF2M for HS, 560+ only! Or a lot of groups sell Garrosh kills and challenge mode stuff if you don't have heroic kills or 9/9 gold.
- There was a point last year where the server still regularly had 30-60 minute queues during peak hours. It hasn't happened in months, but I expect it to happen again once WoD launches.
Wow, that turned out longer than I thought.
