Sever Pop, NA Time, Fresh Start?

hello, a few friends and I are looking to potentially start on a TBC server. we have been on vanilla for quite some time and want a change. Im asking to see how feasible it is for people to start fresh now and still be able to raid and do content. Are their Kara Pugs? are their guilds and the ability to do SSC and the other lower raids? We do not want to come here if its dead time and nothing to do other than raid log. We play east coast raid times, are their any guilds that fit that zone? How is the population around that time? What faction is the most balanced? and what classes are in highest demand?

Thanks.

Server pop is pretty healthy.

This is for alliance side, since I have no idea what goes on, on horde side. There are Kara pugs and I have seem some new guilds that are gearing up for SSC/TK. I have even seen people looking to fill spots for those raids.

How about pvp? season 3 right now? Season 4 is last season in TBC. Will the pvp just die after that? Dont want to dump a lot of time for the scene to be over in like 4 months.

The server is full of several thousand players. There are numerous guilds running everything from Heroics/T4 to Black Temple. There are not a lot of Kara PUGs, more due to the nature of people distrusting/disliking PUGs in general, rather than any server population issue. You will still find occasional LF1M slot-fill requests for Kara/Gruuls, particularly for niche specs like spriest or Mage Tank.

NA timezones is the server lull time, but the scene is still healthy, and there are progression guilds to be found for EST or PST raidtimes, as well as a handful of more casual T4 guilds. You can see the level of demand for players by browsing the Recruitment subsection of this forum (paying particular attention to the NA guilds if you're aiming to raid in the 2-8am GMT slot).