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.