Personally, I think the game should have optional basic tutorials on using spells as the new player gets them, like quests and occasionally scenarios that can be accessed through the class trainer. Why would you choose this new spell or ability or when? These would also be useful later for a player who decided to skip that stuff and then realized he didn’t understand some things that were holding him back.
There could be a “basics of instances” tutorial that explains what to watch for and how to react. It would teach players to follow the tank rather than wandering off the path and aggroing mobs. How to recognize upcoming common mechanics that are often telegraphed in dungeons or raids.
Also a “know your role” tutorial that teaches a player how to be a team player, what not to do to maximize their usefulness to the group. It would provide maximum opportunity to make mistakes, and immediate feedback to players fell into those traps. Lots of tooltips, circles, and arrows.
Not everyone is capable of teaching themselves complex things they don’t understand. In fact, I think it’s the rare minority who are able to go from absolute zero to competence in a short period of time. The fact that elite players who have been playing for decades can run a dungeon once, notice everything they need to know, and recognize what they need to look up is not relevant to the learning process of the total noob.
In fact, there could indeed be a tutorial on how to use outside third party sites to do research and speed up progress.
I don’t think any of this will ever be part of the game in a meaningful way, since Blizzard can’t accept the reality of how humans learn new things. They think that the learning process for becoming a great gamer is unrelated to the learning process for anything else, and all it will take is a change of attitude for the new player to suddenly become a talented, quick learner who needs to step into a dungeon just once to get most of what they need to know. This is because the few designers, planners, and developers who ever played the game seriously are so far from being average player/learners that they don’t remember what it was like to play their first game. Or they may have been so talented and privileged they really did pick it up very quickly and had a family support them playing 12 hours a day 7 days a week.
But the fact is that if you put a noob in a dungeon with other players, he’s going to make mistakes he doesn’t realize he’s making, and if he’s a tank or healer he will probably get kicked. Do you seriously think a new healer who doesn’t know most of his spells or that you need a healing addon, doesn’t know how to use mouseover macros, and doesn’t know what a dispel is going to heal properly?