Help a new-comer out

[dDule 0]

I tried Elysium vanilla WoW server for a couple of times but i didn't get the hang of it. Few days ago i did and i came a little bit longer way then the previous tries. I played all expansions of WoW and almost every private server only had one realm for leveling and one realm for PvP(perhaps even a third one for private testing. Atlantiss has it).

But i was a little bit confused when seeing that Elysium has 4 realms(now 3, i started just a little bit before the character transfer). I didn't know which to pick, so i was going 'quantity over quality' and picked 'Elysium' realm being most populated. I thought that's gonna be better and feel more alive. This morning i wanted to check something out on the Elysium site and i stumbled on a 'Timeline' tab. As i understand so far, the 'Timeline' tab shows the progress of individual realms. 'Anathema' being the oldest and 'Elysium' being the newest realm. As a young gamer that doesn't care about the looks and the information and only wants to play the game, i rushed through the account creation and started to play. The 'Timeline' tab really confused me even more then the realm pick. I want to experience vanilla WoW in it's true form. So my main question here is; "Is 'Anathema' the realm with the most progress and content then the other realms? If so, why 'Elysium' has more players then 'Anathema' and 'Darrowshire' combined and doubled? I know that there was the transfer from the fourth realm to 'Elysium' but why people still pick 'Elysium' realm over the other two? I've been playing a troll mage and came up to level 13, but since i thrive to have as much content as i can, is it too late to swap to the other realms? 'Anathema' is close to finishing in 2017/09(TBC). Does that mean that in the september, 'Anathema' realm will be fully Blizzlike?".

I just need some explaining about the realm content/realm progress in order to know on which to play. Help a new-comer out.

Thank you

 

[Gnog 1]

Blizzard's retail version of Vanilla rolled out in phases. New patches brought new content and mechanic changes. The Elysium timelines are modeled on that gradual rollout, with some tweaks for various good reasons. So all of the servers are blizzlike, and none is more blizzlike than any other. They're just at different stages of Vanilla. Anathema is the fartherst along, followed by Darrowshire, followed by Elysium. Elysium is the freshest server and did not allow transferred characters from Nost. So most new people rolled there in January and since.