Pipkin

Merge Anathema and Elysium. Then give players a chance to transfer in either direction. There are players on Elysium tired of lag and pvp. There are players on Darrowshire who want a higher population server. I see no reason why both can't be accommodated. If, after the dust settles, there is still concern over the population being too low, then leave it to the players to decide the fate of the server. Let us earmark donations for our server of choice, and if the player base isn't willing to pay to keep the separate PvE server, then so be it.

I guess it really depends on your play style and how much you want to do solo. I leveled as disc/holy and it took about 11 days /played, but that was with a fair amount of time spent maxing out professions and just exploring. So while shadow may be a bit quicker, I don't think it's significant, unless you insist on doing everything alone. The benefit I see in leveling disc is that it pushes you to work with people more and to get comfortable with the healing play style. It seems silly to me to spend 59 levels using one set of spells, then completely switching over at 60 and having to unlearn the habits developed in all the previous levels. Plus focusing on healing from the beginning will help in befriending a number of tanks, who will end up being there for you whenever you want to run dungeons. If you start off in a friendly, helpful guild, you're going to level quickly with whichever route you choose.

No, they said it would be something they would get community feedback for when the time comes to decide.

For leveling I recommend <The Brave>. Several active 60s with leveling alts that tend to be willing to stop what they're doing to help a guildie in need. You will sometimes see people trying for a dungeon for hours in chat, but many people are more willing to run dungeons with guildies over randoms, so being in a guild is a priority if you want easy dungeon groups. As for build, if raiding isn't a concern then by all means go tank. The rare occasions when I can't get a dungeon going, it's usually for lack of a tank.

I play horde, and I've hardly ever had an issue getting people for dungeons/quests. With the population being so much higher on the Alliance side, I don't think you'll have any issues. You won't have trouble leveling professions either.