Silver Member
Pay to win does not exist on any server. Paying for gear won't teach you a rotation or give you brains to use what spell/ability when nor give you raid experience. Sure you can buy things in the server and sure you might get taken by a guild who only bases skill off of your gearscore. But you'll never be good in pve or pvp unless you know what you are doing. This making pay to win really not even a thing as 99% of players can't play their class no matter the gear or items. Icecrown has lasted for years because it is a place where people with less time can level up and get to see content faster. Gold squishes to keep the economy in balance are a yearly thing. Icecrown has the better retail scripts vs all other warmane servers. I've personally been on the realm before it merged ragnaros and deathwing, before the rename to warmane, before the moltdown in 2015. Yes it does have its flaws and it does not have 10k players due to how warmane calculates players online by account over an hour period, but it does enjoy a larger playerbase than pretty much anyone out there and has stood the test of time.
Lord is not blizzlike. Yes there is no shop and rates are 1x like retail. However scripting is not retail like for end game. Some bosses feature bigger health pools and shorter enrage timers compared to their other non seasonal realm icecrown, which is more blizzlike than lord is when it comes to scripts.