Lordaeron for PvPer?

Hi Warmane to community, I'm new to your servers and interested in Lordaeron for the 'selfmade' feel and longevity, as I enjoy the leveling process and collection of coveted loot by intended means, however, upon reaching 80 I want to focus primarily on PvP. So my question is, as an alliance hunter, will I have an anti-climatic PvP experience with this realm?

I have heard about the griefing, toxic PvPers blah blah, but as long as they've gotten OP by obtaining the equipment themselves, I can live with it. My main concerns are that the server is mostly PvE focused with the tuning changes, and that I won't find partners. I am not sure I understand correctly how arena and bgs are cross-realm with donors, but I from what I've heard there is a much large barrier to entry.

Anyone have pros and cons to PvP on Lordaeron? How important are faction and meta classes? If I'm fighting donors anyway, should I just stick to Icecrown?

I appreciate feedback :)

Hello, greymoir.

There is a small pvp community here, but it's possible you're going to have problems finding teammates. Yes, you will be fighting donors. Yes, you will be forced to play pve if you want to get better results.

I started playing here because my friends chose this server. So far we've managed to get 1950 for head on several characters. I still don't have BiS equipment on my shaman but I don't care about it anymore. It's really fun and challenging to win vs BiS players, plus you get the feeling your gear is deserved, every bit of it. Icecrown and Blackrock won't give you same emotions imo.

It's really up to you to decide if you really want to play on this server. I didn't regret my server choice.

The entry barrier is due to a lot of people having great gear while being terrible at their class so you'll face Shadowmourne's even on low rating from Icecrown. If you're focusing solely on PvP, you'll cripple yourself playing on Lordaeron honestly. Partially because the BiS PvP set has a lot of Hc PvE offparts, especially for a hunter, which are hard to come by on Lordaeron unless you dedicate a lot of time to raiding (which as you said you're not looking to do).
As for faction and meta classes, take a look on Armory here: http://armory.warmane.com/ladder/2v2/1/80 Check how many Arms+Hpala combos there are. Sure, there are others, but it's nowhere near the amount of the war+pala combo. There's 6 hunters total in top 50 teams and most of them are in a 2+ people team.

All in all, if you're into self-harm then by all means, play PvP on Lordaeron. If not, head to Icecrown.