I used to lead the largest guild on the Emerald Dream 1x server (@Feenix), we got to 700 total members with 105 being our online record, and 0 trolling in our gchat. When the release of Nostalrius halved population there, and I was insulted by their admin while trying to be propositional to help that server recover, I realized I'd move the guild to somewhere else better.
I played on Nostalrius for a week, then Kronos was launched, tried it for a week as well, same zones, same classes, to be able to make an unbiased comparison. Despite the numbers on Nostalrius were overwhelming already, I felt as a guild leader - hence bound by responsibility towards so many members - I had to choose wisely and try to imagine things in perspective, to pick what would be better for them in the long run. I went for Kronos because it seemed the most promising realm, better website organization, AWESOME bugtracker (Nostalrius didn't even have one yet), better scripts, better staff.
I made up my mind, the core of the guild agreed, so I wrote a huge wall of text on our site to show everyone the results of my tests, with comparative screenshots about both realms, and possibly convince as many of them as possible to move here. Through April, 60 guildies left their ED toons behind (of course, many of them with lots of gold, raiding gear, epic mounts and whatnot) to reroll on Kronos. I myself accepted to scrap what was in our guild bank (pre-raid BiS gear and about 2500g) for the promise that Kronos represented.
So I can safely say I could single-handedly bring 60 players on Kronos, and with a little more effort and patience (more of the old members followed us in the last two months), that initial core has grown by 7 times, with 420 members currently, and the #2 largest active base realm wide. I even asked one of our ED members, DotMatrix, to enable his census site for Kronos, providing the realm with the most accurate population statistics to date: Kronos-Census.com for those interested or mistrusting my words.
Leading a large guild allows you an unmatched insight to how population twists on a realm. You can tell a realm is thriving when you are not having a hard time recruiting new players for your guild. During our last months on ED pretty much no-one would join us, on Kronos we are joined by 10-15 people a day, on average. When we started here, about 5% of our guild was made up of american players, now that percentage value has raised to almost 30%. Yet another proof of Kronos being healthy is that, despite the summer season that's just begun, the active weekly base is keeping steadily on 7000-7500 players, whereas on every private realm it's supposed to dwindle in this period.
Kronos doesn't really need boosted XP rates, bonuses nor special features of sort, and we have literally nothing to worry about. A little patience and commitment from the current players, a constant influx of fixed bugs, and time will do the rest. ED itself had similar numbers in its first days, despite there still was no competition and although it didn't provide such quality nor uptimes (hell, not even the faintest hint of a DDoS attack in 3 months and almost week-long uptimes, something like I've never seen).
Fear not, Kronos will slowly gain the upper hand.
Former ED player from Stormlords chiming in, Meah, don't know if you remember me. Just wanted to say that it was Moradins comparison of Kronos and Nost that made me pick Kronos. My IRL friends wanted the population and went to Nostalrius instead. Guess where they are now? Yep, here on Kronos. Idc what they say about nostrils, but the population there is not healthy. My friends sat in Norway with fucking fiber optic net with laggspikes and a 1 second delay on casting. It was unbearable. Im playing on horde side now, so Moradin, greet the guild from me! :winkiss: