I kept having crashes so couldn't do a Census+ scan but with a buddy we tested out some of our plans. (I was on the earlier Stress tests so had half baked ideas)

Phasing helped a lot. I logged into different zones and the Tauren stayed the emptiest. As my last Census showed. If you log in and just sit in that phase for about an hour or two. All the players level out of the starting zone but still fill the phase you are in. I found making a few different characters every 15 minutes let me choose what phase to be in.

I learned I cant meet in Bloodhoof Village at 8 but must do it at 3. The bottlenecks to the horde with Exploration and Fedex quests will help me escape the starting zone by only doing the Belt and head quest together on all my toons skipping the other bottle necked kill quests. Then quickly moving to bloodhoof village. I found even when Mulgore was very busy the wide open space let me kill mobs and Never go Idle. If It got busy afking for 20 minutes (seriously just go eat a pizza) left my layer full but players then moved out of my zone.

I was watching Swifty multibox took him about an hour and a half to set it up (sounds fine to me) but he couldn't find mobs to kill in the higher level zone. He made gnomes which are the second busiest zones on the Alliance side. He was level 4 in about 4 hours. That should convince anyone that Fedex and Exploration will be much faster on Alliance side then just killing higher level mobs. He could not find any mobs. More people after this test are realizing the Exploration Meme is not a joke.