I tried WoWscape today and it was fine. The server itself is heavily populated and doesn't suffer from the common illness from private servers (crashes, broken quests or items, etc.). It has four realms: Blizzlike, Blizzlike-high, Fun and Instant-60.
- Blizzlike has Blizz-like (doh) rates for EXP and loot, but, amazingly as it sounds, you start in lvl60...
- Blizzlike-high, well, x8 in EXP and drops, but still keeping the same "Blizzard-like" atmosphere, meaning you'll get only what the monster originally dropped. Don't expect a super-1337 gear on your first kill
- Fun... I didn't much play in fun, because Blizzlike was too fun for me... But it was really laggy, because it was the highest populated realm in the server.
- Instant-60... dunno. It's basically the same as Blizzlike, I guess, but with less "Blizzlike" feeling... And it's also PVP, IIRC.
Overall, it's a nice server. I would have played on Blizzlike-high (because it's the best when it comes to "a true WoW experience", but I got a high latency in it -- ~300ms was the max I could handle. The same goes for Toxic WoW. I have never been able to enter the Mid-drop server, which is in the EU.
Just pay the monthly fee if you really like the game. It's totally worth it
Or buy GuildWars and play for free xD
PS: Just to be clearer, I had lag peaks because of the distance between the server and I: I'm in Europe, while the servers are in the States. If you play from the USA, you should be perfectly fine and safe
