So, maybe a server split?

No.
Obnoxious is correct on that one. WotLK retail had separate servers for pretty much anything. They had separate Instance servers, Battleground servers and stuff, possibly even separate ones for each of the 4 world maps.

Plus, WotLK had the RDF which was the second big crossrealm feature after the Battlegrounds and Arenas.

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Originally Posted by Mchaplain

I am not completely sure, but afaik in wotlk they had battlegrounds which contained multiple servers, cross-realm came later.

Wether it was multiple servers or not, fact is they had a ton of people stacked on servers back then, TM for example being one of the unstable servers due to it being old technology, but still being well over 5 digits I believe.

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I don't know what digits you are thinking but from what i know first blizzard never revieled any information about server caps or populations in numbers and then from battle net discussions from player observations i think their highest population servers were around 10 000 and thats with noticeable lag before the cross realm

Retail population caps were 3k max during tbc. Most realms were imbalanced and had a ridiculous amount of horde vs alliance players. Back then the hardware wasn't developed as it is now. That's a huge difference. But it was hardcore... that's what we read on this forum.

i think split the server is a bad idea, lordaeron is beautiful because is new and is big. And you don't have to raise the server cap if it makes the server unstable.
15 min queue in peak hours is more than decent and some ppl will leave anyway after a while because they give up/irl things/new xpac-games.