I did something similar, east coast to Atiesh because I wanted to play 9pm central. My impressions: most raid guilds start at 6pm server from what I've seen advertised so you still have that 8pm cst local start time. Not all of them but a surprising number.
The thing that really surprised me though is that while my old server was full as well, but somehow mining on Atiesh is a disaster. Every mining node i find has someone already mining it or 3 people all racing to it. It's farmed 24/7 and I do mean 24/7. I've been on at midnight, 3am, 7am, noon, 3pm it doesn't matter what time of day there are always at least a dozen people with epic flying going around every single zone harvesting everything in sight. Not sure if its bot activity but it just really surprised me as my old sever I could get 3-4 stacks of each type of ore in a couple hours but I'd be lucky to get 1-2 on Atiesh. Also people are very greedy on sniping nodes from each other even if same faction. Not everyone but more than I'm used to.
I've also found there to be an overabundance of tanks whether or not that's helpful to you. When I try to make groups there's usually 1 to 3 other tanks all trying to pug but I'm sure there's some selection bias since tanks want specific dungeons for specific drops. Healers would probably be the more in demand role in dungeons and for the guild raid team advertisements I've seen people need dps primarily and healers less so. There are plenty of hunters to go around though.
Culturally it feels very closed off compared to my old sever. People sort of keep to themselves. Old server had joking and whatnot in chat. The only things I've seen on Atiesh is people trying to insult each other and sound clever doing so. I see very little community and just every person for themself mentality. That being said I've only played on it for a couple weeks.
All that being said I've met some very nice people so its not like a terrible server at all. I've only been on it for about 10 days so this is really more like a first impression. Good luck!