They're Restricting Large Chunks of the Game

I stoped playing about half way through cata do my mage is stuck at 85 so I have quite a bit of catch up infront of me. wow gold for sell I do however read wow insider almost daily (although I did start reading less after arch mageypants left) so I do keep up with the changes and now seems like a god time to come back. Just really tired of being on a realm with absolutely no faction pride.

well in that case I'd simply rejoin and get into the catch-up groove on gear and such, depending again on what your in-game goals are. where to buy wow accounts  I would stick with my recommendation to wait to transfer and see how this server-merge thing goes, unless you don't mind blowing another $15 for short-term/temporary reasons.  There's nothing to say that the merged realms won't be a mess at first, but lacking other information you just might be paying to transfer yourself into a worse situation than you'd have without transferring now.  Of course, if you are on a PVP realm your leveling/catch-up experience is going to suck balls, simply because  CRZ isn't quite as "dynamic" as was advertised, so you'll still get ganked a lot and possibly frustrated in your pursuit of quest mobs and such.

Actually they aren't merging the realms, they are creating "Virtual Realms" where realms will have a combined AH, guilds, etc. but you may have the same name as a toon from another realm with the # after the name. There has been at least one article at WI about that.

They are merged realms.

I mean, you can apply whatever term you want to for the change, but unless they're restricting large chunks of the game (which it seems they're not, from the descriptions), this is a server-merge called "Virtual Realms."

If you can see a difference in the two, given what we know, please point it out.  Thus far, they haven't announced any restrictions on interacting with new-realm players that I am aware of.