The struggle is real?

It's just that the queue only exists for non-donors, that's all. Not much to do with lowering or changing the cap. I do think there are quite a lot of donors pushing it past the 'soft cap' (the point where you start to get a queue as a non-donor) It is quite clear that this soft cap is also far lower than the 'hard cap' and as such appears to serve a different purpose. That's just my appraisal.

I don't know of a cap that affects donors. I have never encountered it, I just have to assume that is when the ever-common 'world server down' message pops up.

Should the soft cap be raised? Probably, but only because it seems to be set so far below the point where the server experiences stability issues. There shouldn't be a soft cap for non-donors only, there should be a hard cap for everyone that isn't determined by when the server crashes though, where donors and non-donors alike are unable to enter until the population goes down.

You can say unregulated donor logins pushing the population up isn't affecting anything, but on this end it seems to be causing a lot of stability/latency problems.

So the way I see it, the only options are to split the server, get even beefier hardware/optimize the core more, or put an actual queue that can't be paid to bypass, i.e a queue that exists solely to maintain server stability and has no monetary incentives attached to it. in effect, not a cash grab.

I'm leaning towards splitting the server because frankly it is way too crowded to be considered a blizzlike experience, but that would be way harder to manage than merging them was so making a new one and hoping it catches on is the more likely approach, but this would appeal mostly to non-donors who regularly get stuck in queue so is it good business? Probably not.

All in all it's really hard, not many things you can do to appease the whole playerbose now since the icecrown merge, I don't expect miracles just a few things that might help. Maybe even putting a hard cap to where the soft cap currently is, offering free transfers, and THEN opening up a new wotlk server letting people who cant handle the queue pour in. If another server was in the works, this would probably be the best way to give it traction.

A lot of players myself included only donated to skip the queue in the first place, being forced into a queue at this point would only make people pissed.
People come to Icecrown because of the high population, if people only wanted low latency they would play on another realm, so lowering the cap and forcing donors into the queue would only upset everyone.

Sometimes the queue may say 1000, but it's actually 6000 who tried to logg but then just shut down wow cause they didn't want to or could wait that long.

Many players myself included think Icecrown is way to endgame, but we still don't want all our progress lost, so 1 thing I do agree with you @Pooppickle is that warmane should open a new realm, with the same rates as Icecrown, a second Icecrown if you would, where there's no realm transfer, no coin shop for the first month or two, where people start of fresh, a lot of new players would also be drawn to this since most find it very annoying to gear up on Icecrown.

And the Lordaeron system where you released the patches after each other was a great concept that could work great on a new realm too, but start at wotlk this time. It costs money with a server yes, it's not just "go open a new realm" but money would be the only problem (donnu if money actually is a problem for this server though).

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Originally Posted by Disktrasa

People come to Icecrown because of the high population

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Icecrown is populated cause it's populated.
10/10 logic

People come to icecrown for high rates and avaliable donation shop - that made population.

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Originally Posted by Pooppickle

I am not saying the cap should be lowered, but there's clearly a point well below whatever the 'hard cap' is (I've never seen it as a donor so I assume that's just when the server crashes?) where non-donors can't get in anymore. That queue exists for money as far as I can tell... I am not saying the cap should be lowered, just that the queue only existing for non-donors gives the impression of a cash grab not concern for server stability.

There is no need to be defensive about the queue system, as a donor I would not mind having to wait in queue at peak hours if it meant when i was finally in it wouldn't be a laggy mess. I'm sure many feel the same.

This all pretty much comes back to the original mistake of merging rag into dw, which came off as a very knee-jerk reaction. I mean yeah pops were low at that time but that was because of Lordaeron hype, everyone was trying out the shiny new 1x server and were going to come home sooner or later. Merging seemed like a good idea at the time but it doubled the effect of that homecoming and brought us into this conundrum that is Icecrown.

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You are not understanding a single thing that the people are replying to you with. The queue only existing for non donors could exist for money but I do not understand how that is an EXCLUSIVE statement when you can have the queue both for stability and the cash(it could also exist for various reasons). You're making it sound WAY worse than it does and I personally just don't appreciate that, you're pushing a toxic narrative.

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Originally Posted by Quet

You are not understanding a single thing that the people are replying to you with. The queue only existing for non donors could exist for money but I do not understand how that is an EXCLUSIVE statement when you can have the queue both for stability and the cash(it could also exist for various reasons). You're making it sound WAY worse than it does and I personally just don't appreciate that, you're pushing a toxic narrative.

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There are far too many players on icecrown for my taste but that's another issue