Realms

Understand World of Warcraft realm types: Normal, PvP, Role-Playing (RP), and RP-PvP. Make an informed decision for your best gaming experience.

The first thing you must do is choose a realm that is right for you. If you want to just play the game solo for as much as you can or want to, then you only need a PvE realm on whatever. But factors such as the economy, end-game raiding progression, social atmosphere, and PvP require much more foresight - and most likely several re-roles of characters on a few servers.

Here are the four types of realms:

• Normal - Only by you engaging in PvP, turning on your flag, or entering an enemy city can enemy players attack you.
• PvP - Once out of the two starting zones for your area, you are fresh meat at any and all times. And yes, people are sad enough to spend their entire day attacking lowbies, and they aren't even 80s usually.
• Role-Playing (RP) - Strict realms only used by the very mature and veteran Warcraft players. There are many rules to follow in these realms, and they are monitored by Blizzard GMs, so don't think you can jump in and cause long-term trouble or break the rules a lot. You must pick some non-funny/mocking or crazy name, it must be something that seems like a "fantasy" name. And finally you need to try and restrict yourself to /say or /yell chat; basically just rethinking how you may chat in other realms. It's also possible that you must speak in your races' language, an option in the chat bubble icon.
• RP-PvP - What could be the strictest of realms, only meant for the most hardcore of players.

Granted, all realms will have the occasional idiot come on and try to cause trouble, and they do get away with it for longer than you would think. Blizzard is not fast at all in responding or taking action to such individuals. So RP realms are kinda always in flux as far as I can tell.

I was lucky in that my realm is of medium population, I found a good guild, the economy isn't terrible, and the PvP is fairly even.

You are not stuck to one realm (or server), you can hop on as many servers as you wish. But you're stuck with a limit of 50 toons and no more than 10 on one server, regardless of faction.

What this means is that so long as you don't mind possibly wasting time leveling on a server you later realize you dislike, then you can always try on another or eat the transfer fee (I would encourage you not to though...).

Another thing that may or may not come up is that sometimes servers are down or you may just get bored with your main toons. For this it may be worth it taking a small investment in a second or even third server just so all your eggs are not in one basket. I DO NOT intend for you to take up 3 active rotation of toons to play everyday on three different servers, no, what I mean is just at some point you may want to camp a few level 6's on other servers, that's all.

Here is a link to where you can check the status of each realm to help decide where you want to play, because high population realms require waiting times to get in, but low-pop realms could pose different problems, such as one faction having a big advantage:

• NOTE: Of things to keep in mind is that small pop realms usually have higly inflated economies, one-sided world pvp, and potentially a one-sided battle-group.

Here is also the link to check the status of realms during down-time and patch days: