Hey,
Recently, I started playing WoW SoD for the first time, and I’m fascinated by it, but I feel like even with the recent arrival of Phase 2, there’s little content left. I want to keep playing because I’m still very hyped, but I’m not sure if it’s too late to start playing WotLK, or if I should wait a little longer and go for Cataclysm. Help!
Not to sound like a downer, but I wouldn’t suggest getting into WOTLK unless you pick a very high population server. I’m on Ashkandi and ever since the release of SoD the playerbase has been pathetic. Queues take absolute ages and finding people for things manually is next to impossible. It’s just not as viable to play “solo” in this type of game.
Faerlina if you’re Horde.
Benediction if you’re Alliance.
Do not make any other characters on any other servers as you are absolutely wasting your time. You want to be on one of the megaservers as that gives you the most options for ALL content as the population dies off after Phase 1.
As for WotLK, don’t get too sweaty with gearing up for WotLK content as the Cata patch will drop around March/April and Cata negates anything you loot from Heroic Lich King by roughly level 83, approximately 6-8 hours after you start Cataclysm.
WotLK is very fun depending on what your class preferences are and Cata makes a few of them even better. Just don’t stress trying to cap your gear week to week since it all goes out the window around June. That’ll come faster than you think.
It’s a fine time to start considering the Joyous Journey buff is active until Cataclysm pre-patch. Though, like Pally said don’t expect much in terms of activity in the low level zones. Everyone is either playing SoD or chillin’ at max level waiting for Cataclysm. If you want to prepare for Cataclysm and get to 80 though I say go for it.
Grobbulus is a good realm if you want to see the opposing faction at any point.
Is it better for me to start leveling in WotLK and keep my character for Cata, or should I start leveling my character from scratch in Cata?
It’s faster to level with JJ now than it will be once Cata hits.
Leveling now just means you breeze through the first few Cata levels faster if you happened to get some gear before then. Other than that, no real benefit. It’s entirely up to you.
just to clarify, both Faerlina and Benediction are PvP servers so you have most people sitting in cities all day long and the majority of “world PvP” consists of ganking at raid lines and the occasional bored max char harassing lowbies who try to get up
PvE megaservers are Mankrik for Horde and Pagle for Alliance
Grobbulus is BiS my brother. @OP, come to Grob and never look back. It is the realm that most captures the spirit of warcraft. Just enjoy leveling with that sweet joyous journeys, get to 80 and do wintergrasp and other battlegrounds for a starter set of honor gear. Position yourself for cataclysm, there is no rush.
Edit: There is wpvp city raids basically every friday, sometimes up to 80+ on both sides. There are spies on both sides, sneaky summoning tactics, and now even an economic war for free action potions. If you make some friends you can probably get carried to get some gear to start pulling your weight. You should be able to find a guild recruiting people looking ahead to cataclysm.
TLDR really.
https://ironforge.pro/population/classic/WoW Wrath Pagle Discord”.Every server’s discord got guild recruitment tabs. Most of them are for raiders, but you can still find some chilled laid back guilds. Reach out to Officers/GMs via duscord and just tell them about yourself and how you’re here to learn and just want to make some friends.
^Here you can look up guides. Profession guides. You can also look up every single quest and scroll down to read comments for more information.
First you an addon manager. It’s basically like an addon hub that will allow you to download and keep them updated all in 1 place.
Curseforge is pretty much the largest one.
Download Stand-alone version without Overwolf. (If you don’t know what Overwolf is, or use it for any other games, you really don’t need it)
https://www.curseforge.com/download/app#download-options
These addons do not require any set up and I think extremely helpful for newer players.
/way ** ** commands. You can often find them in comment section of wowhead.--Image for visuals: https://i.imgur.com/wNiByLT.png Image for visual: https://i.imgur.com/Gcq7ZTb.png--Image for visuals: https://i.imgur.com/kxPDhId.png-- https://i.imgur.com/ibqbSXf.pngI think it covers the basics. If you choose to play on Pagle (my realm Alliance-US-East), let me know and I’ll hook you up some gold. But Benediction is bigger. Perhaps someone here from Bene can give you pointers in game.
P.S. Wrath is not dead. There are still 10’s of thousands of active players. This is Dalaran on Pagle right now this very second at 6:41PM on a Thursday night.
https://i.imgur.com/MmaeMe1.jpeg
Its not too late to start WOTLK, pick a good population server and level up, at max level grind some honor via Hellfire daily and Wintergrasp, buy enough furious gear from Area 52 (Outland) pvp vendor to get you into Gamma heroic 5mans.
Spam Gamma heroics 5mans, buy badge vendor gear and gear up then go from there, enjoy it and play it, doesn’t take long to gear for ICC, took me 4 days played at 80 for my alt.
Things to keep in mind:
Have fun.
You missed it.
Play both and figure out which one you want to play… who knows - with a little detective work, you might like both.
Anyone else as surprised as I am to find someone helpful here instead of just the bottle-full-of-bitters that encompasses most of the rest of us? 
Cata hasn’t even been given a release date. You are perfectly fine leveling at this point. I started a fresh character in December and hit 80 a couple of weeks ago. Still lots of stuff to do. I’m on Windseeker and there’s a good amount of people. Best of luck!
Not really. The forums are like most other platforms, feed into the garbage and take every opportunity to be angry then you will usually find yourself surrounded by garbage and anger. If on the other side you take opportunities to be decent and don’t get dragged into constant troll arguments you will generally find your forum experience decent and be ok.
Don’t get me wrong there are plenty of toxic folks here but most get leave if you don’t feed them and the few that stay you learn to ignore. After that you can find quite a few helpful people here and even some decent conversations.
A large part of Cata’s new content is the 1-60 leveling experience completely redone. So I mean, make a char or two for the next 4-5 months that you want to maybe experience Wrath on, then save some of your toon ideas for Cata because it is crazy different starting fresh on Cata.
Yeah… but do I pick druid or priest 
If they do it the same way as last time, then rogues are leet sauce in Cata. Especially the sub rogues. Level it up now so you can enjoy it for later.
I’ve only been in Wrath for about two weeks but loving it. Come join in, I still see people levelling around me.