Java around the world

Hey everyone. I have played on many private servers in the past, and gave them up, and since have reinstalled the game. Now, I go change my realmlist.wtf file to what I am told to, for any site and give it a try, and It will not connect to the private server, it still runs normal wow and allows me to log into my normal wow account. The realmlist hasn't changed, it's still set for private server. What am I doing wrong? I have the latest patch (2.3.3)