Quests
Quests in WoW are tasks given to PCs by NPCs. The completion of quests provides many different rewards to the player, including reputation, experience, items, and gold. There are a variety of quests available, from single objective tasks to epic multi-step endeavors. Currently (BC-patch 2.4) there are more than 2000 quests in World of Warcraft.
Realms
World of Warcraft uses server clusters (known as "realms") to allow players to choose their preferred gameplay type and to allow the game to support as many subscribers as it does. There are four types of realms: Normal (also known as PvE or player versus environment), PvP (player versus player), RP (a roleplaying Normal/PvE server) and RP-PvP (roleplaying PvP server):
Normal
On the Normal (also know as PvE, Player versus Environment) realms throughout most of the world players cannot attack or be attacked by each other, except by actively enabling the character's PvP flag, attacking a PvP-flagged character, entering a "PvP Territory" (such as a Battleground) or an enemy faction Capital City, or casting a positive spell on a friendly PvP-flagged character. The PvP flag is removed after 5 minutes from the last PvP action. If the PvP flag was enabled using the command the player will need to turn it off using the same command and then avoid PvP combat for 5 minutes.
PVP (Player versus Player)
On a PvP realm, players are flagged for PvP by default. This flag is only disabled when a character is in a friendly faction city or a zone dedicated to newly created characters. All other zones are considered "contested territory" where players are automatically flagged for PvP upon entering. Most players will not need to enter a contested zone until roughly level 20.
On PvP servers, a player is limited to creating characters on one faction. This is in contrast to PvE servers, where a player may create characters from both factions.
The PvP servers also feature a more "hands–off" approach to server policies, facilitating the state of open war in these servers. Thus, The in-game GMs will deal with PvP related offenses differently than on the PvE realms, and some player actions are allowed to occur.[17] These actions include, but are not limited to, corpse camping, ganking, and other PvP related sections of Blizzard's harassment policy.
RP (Roleplaying)
The roleplaying servers use the same ruleset as PvE realms, with the exception that players must act and behave in character, and must follow "naming rules" when they name their character. On these realms, players act and speak as their characters would, and anything said out of character is usually preceded by "OOC:" or presented in ((double parentheses)). It is also against the rules to be off-topic in all public channels, such as General and Trade.[18]
RP-PvP (Roleplaying Player versus Player)
The roleplaying PvP realms are an extension to the role-playing realms that use the PvP ruleset instead of the Normal (PvE) ruleset. Blizzard did not initially have this server type when the game was launched; it was added later.[19]
Public test realm
A public test realm, also called a test server, is used to test features in development for the next patch. Players can copy a character to the test realm or can sometimes copy a premade character. Players on test realms may encounter character wipes, item wipes, or frequent downtime to make changes or apply patches.
Users may have up to ten characters per realm and up to a maximum of fifty characters per account.[20] Characters can be moved between realms in the same region (e.g., from one European server to another, but not from a European server to an American one) for a fee.
Blizzard posts announcements on the login screen of World of Warcraft and on the official forums about realm status or other technical issues. The status for each realm can also be viewed on their main website. Check out Valkors Gold Making Guide