This just came up on a google search, but please allow me to disagree.
First time playing wow ever in my life was in Warmane's Icecrown x7 realm. I got 80 after 1 week, after 2 weeks I was out of the game.
Some IRL "pro casual" friends invited me to start playing WoW.
Too fast, some friends would try to help me here and there, but if you never played wow, it's way too fast paced, you wont learn your class, you will not know what 50% of your pve abilities do when you're at max level. Let alone knowing pvp.
Rushing to the end will get you faster into endgame and you'll learn the "meta" and optimized stuff for endgame faster. but you miss on so many challenging quest lines, mini bosses, sorting out through thousands of different gear pieces, learning skills 1 by 1 and getting used to them before you just wake up to a 40 skill action bar.
Let alone, getting used to configure some much appreciated QoL addons that will make a world of difference.
At x1 pace was where I learned the game. I left my friends in Icecrown and went to Lordaeron to play there alone, later my girl and bro joined me, and we've made friends there, a lot of them, people come and go, like on all realms.
Funny enough, I have more people to play on Lordaeron because the comunity is a bit more tight knit and you see the same names more often, you develop deeper relationships if you're playing often there.
On a super populated realm like Icecrown I got ninja and grief by same faction (healer not healing, tank not tanking, dps pulling everything etc)
You'll find a ton more bad apples in Icecrown and worse, it's so much people, so easy to roll alts, you might be carrying those sorry asses again later on without even knowing it.
Not only that, they can kick you out of a raid mid-raid to add a friend of them, or just straight up ninja everything from a raid, even in dungeons I had rogues needing on spellpower blades when I needed them for my mage.
The amount of reports I need to do in Icecrown is 50/1 comparing both realms.
Icecrown is way more toxic in a sense where the game is so easy that nothing matters, they "fckd" you up just log on some alt do something else don't worry.
It's almost like you're not even playing the same game as when I was in Lordaeron.
not to mention that on Lordaeron you actually need to learn to use your class and to learn the mechanics for the raids, while in Icecrown you just ignore half of the mechanics and steamroll everything. And while it's so easy, many times pugs ask for extremely high gear requirements ahaha
Because everyone sucks so bad at actually playing the game, they will ask for 6000gs to join Ruby Sanctum 25 Normal... while on Lordaeron I've had characters do that Raid with 5300gs... lolol such a joke.
Not to mention it's so casual friendly half of the people there have no clue how to do raids, how to lead, mechanics, achievements, etc...
OFC you also have some really good and experienced players there, but you'll have to spend time sorting and searching for them.
Lordaeron also has it's own fair share of newbies and roaches just like any realm, but usually they get server wide fame, because we recognize them and their failed pugs from bad leading lolol and they are forced to learn the game if they want to get anywhere.
It's like having some newbie pug some oni25 full of mdps and in phase 2 there is no rdps to bring the boss down.
And the toxicity of Icecrown is an extreme's mixed bag, some people will get mad at you because they have already done everything 10 times and have 10 BIS characters and they cannot fathom how you don't know as much as them.
Others know nothing about the game never read a single guide yet think they are better than everyone else.
Then the griefers who are casuals who just go there to mess with people and mess around after a day of work.
Another thing is, ok in Lordaeron doing min maxing will get you a bit more respect and visibility if you're a loner or don't have a group that knows you already and you wanna get bis, get achievs all that first timer you wanna go cookie cutter to make your own life easier.
But if people already know you and you've got a guild and you wanna try some meme spec and people know you can play well, they will still invite you, ok it might be harder to get BIS icc25hc toc25hc all achievs get all mounts etc but, you'll still raid and have fun using suboptimal specs.
And if you're a really good player sometimes you'll still perform better than many newbie players or just players who aren't that good at the game.
Icecrown advantage for me is just having a ton of people online at all times.
But it's also full of pvp ganking and griefing to the point where sometimes some quest NPCs aren't alive for days, it becomes almost unbearable.
Again, it's so casual that all the deranged weirdos go there to mess up with others and waste your time and they'll feel great about devoting their time to making other player's experience miserable since that's what they've got going on for themselves.
I never went to the new bliz classic but I even know many people who've played both sides, went from Lordaeron to classic and back to Lordaeron.
Lordaeron realm from warmane is in my honest opinion the best WOTLK experience up to date. and it's not even close.
I've never even bought characters, there is no queue to donate but donating for gold, or to get some unobtainable (special) mount or just leveling with one racial and changing to another at endgame. Really worth it.
Many people buy all sorts of stupid games on steam most come out as early access really expensive, I mean you don't have to spend any, but for the tiny amounts me and my girl spent here, this was way worth it.
On a final note I just wish there was a "permanent long lasting" TBC realm with all the characteristics of Lordaeron, but maybe some tweaks to make TBC reps less grindy and more alt friendly, something like that. (Since our WOTLK has some small custom tweaks of it's own that make it even better).
I wanted to fully experience TBC on the same challenging level as Lordaeron's WOTLK, and TBC on it's own has a few challenges and quirks that make it a bit unique and even maybe unfriendly for mdps in pve situations. I've never seen a TBC realm that lasted. Warmane had a TBC realm a long time ago but it was already very low when I wanted to join it while Icecrown and Lordaeron have been staples of the pserver wow community for a decade.
If anyone could find a way to customize a TBC realm to keep a healthy pop for such a long time, I think Warmane could do it but only with some tweaks to keep new players joining after they "missed the train" otherwise the progression funnel gets very narrow.
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