If you've been following your server's progression through the current World of Warcraft event, Capture of Sun's Reach and Opening of the Sunwell Gates (or the event spearheaded by the faction Shattered Sun Offensive), you might have noticed something iffy about certain low to mid population servers getting ahead of the progression list.

Urthwyte from Mal'Ganis posted on the World of Warcraft Forums asking if the higher population realms are handicapped in the race to open the gates of Sunwell and capture the Sun's Reach. Drysc provided a lengthy explanation regarding the matter:

Each phase, and the subsequent "add ons" for each phase (anvil, alchemy table, etc.) require a set number of turn ins of the specific quests that fund them. There's no mechanic that increases that number. So no, a realm with a higher population is not handicapped.

There is however a mechanic that will auto-complete each phase after a set amount of time for those realms that aren't able to complete them within a "decent" amount of time.

What you may be seeing is a general cool down of people taking part in those quests? I can't really say why your realm may be seeing a slower progression aside from them just not completing as many quests as another realm.

There you have it folks. No handicap set for higher population realms. The auto-complete mechanic may be putting lower population realms at par with higher pops realms' progress.