Realm Transfer-How to Choose

[shokter]

I play on an all but dead for raiding server and have finally had enough. I watched many guilds and individual players transfer or quit in the past year and trying to get a decent raiding crew together is way too challenging...so I am biting the bullet and buying a transfer.

What is the best way to find a good realm? I am not on the bleeding edge of progression and never will be, but I do enjoy heroic raiding and am in search of a better raiding community. I had toyed with the idea of apping to a guild as a transfer and then transferring, but I am thinking that is actually more of a crapshoot than just transferring to a vibrant server and then searching for a guild.

I have browsed thru various realm forums and looked thru wowprogress. I've also made a few level 1s, but judging a realm by its /trade is maybe not a fair metric.

Does anyone have any suggestions or tips in how to evaluate potential realms? My realm finished in the bottom 10 for pve progression-US (and my faction was even worse than our counterpart), so I figure any move will at least be an improvement, but I really want to avoid having to buy this more than once.

[Maruka]

Friendly tip many of the cutting edge high pop servers currently have very long wait times to get on, especially during peak hours.

[kustom]

Never make a lvl 1 and ask /trade. You'll get trolls every time.

Wowprogress.com is a decent way to accomplish things. The realm lists are great for not only viewing a server's progression, but also how many people are online during any given time of the day, time zones, and faction ratios if PVP is your venue.

[Firebert]

I had toyed with the idea of apping to a guild as a transfer and then transferring, but I am thinking that is actually more of a crapshoot than just transferring to a vibrant server and then searching for a guild.

Seen plenty of horror stories that go like this:
*Apply to guild on another server
*Accept
*Transfer
*Get guild invite
*Get kicked as soon as you go offline

Find the average population of servers in your area, and then go for one near that average and with a faction bias towards your character.

[shokter]

Never make a lvl 1 and ask /trade. You'll get trolls every time.

Wowprogress.com is a decent way to accomplish things. The realm lists are great for not only viewing a server's progression, but also how many people are online during any given time of the day, time zones, and faction ratios if PVP is your venue.

Hrm I'll have to look more closely at wowprogress...i didn't realize it also had faction ratios and daily activity. And yeah..I'm not trying to transfer to a top top super populated realm...just a happy medium. I haven't encountered any queues anywhere in the realms I've checked out, but then again I haven't gone to Illidan etc.