After you have picked the server you will be taken to the character creation screen. From here you will need to pick the race, class and looks of your character. Also you will be choosing your faction. There are two factions Alliance and Horde. you cannot speak with or mail players of the other faction so If you plan on playing with friends you will want to be the same faction. On PVE or RP servers you can make characters of either faction. On PVP or RPPVP servers you can only have characters of the same faction. Keep in mind if you have characters in both factions they will not be able to mail things to eachother or transfer things by using nuetral auction houses. The Alliance are humans, dwarves, night elves, gnomes, and drenai. Horde are Orcs, Undead, Tauren, Trolls, and Blood Elves. If you have no preference on faction, read on and pick based off of which race/class combination sounds best to you. I'm going to give a run down of the races and classes. However not all classes are available to each race.

There are 10 total races in Warcraft. Each faction has 5. They are all pretty much equal but have little bonuses that are specific to each race. I suggest you don't let starting stats or racial bonuses determine what you choose to be. Instead I would pick your race by what looks best and sounds the most fun to play to you. Your enjoyment of playing the game will benefit from that more than some miniscule advantage you might have by picking a race you dislike. You will be defined by your class and not your race. When people try to find groups they will ask for a warrior or a priest, they wont care if you are a troll or an orc. So make this decision based off what you like.

Humans have a small bonus to sword and mace skills. They also have 5% bonus to spirit. They have an ability called perception which can help spot stealthed targets. It can be beneficial in PVP environments. They also recieve a 10% bonus to faction gains. This becomes more important later in the game, to recieve some tradeskill recipes or patterns you need to have a certain reputation level with them.

Dwarves get a bonus to gun skill and frost resistance. The also have a treasure finding ability. Most people don't use it because it interferes with the the tracking abilities of the gathering professions. Their main claim to fame is Stoneform. It gives a bonus to armor but what i like about it is it's ability to neutralize poisons and diseases. Get poisoned? Stoneform real quick and your cured. It used to slow your walking speed down but they changed that so this ability is quite nice.

Night Elves have a 1% bonus to dodge. A small bonus to nature resistance. The get wisp spirit which makes them move faster in ghost form. Which makes those long corpse runs not so bad. Their big ability is shadowmeld. It allows them to stealth as long as they don't move, cast a spell, fire a ranged weapon etc. Useful for hiding from things when you need to go afk or for ambushing pvp targets.

Gnomes get a bonus to thier skill if they choose to be engineers. They get a small bonus to arcane resistance and a bonus to intellect. Their big ability is called escape artist. It allows them to step out of movement impairing effects. Pretend you are in playing capture the flag and you have the flag and are running for your life and someone snares you with a ice trap, you hit escape artist and voila you are free to run again. They also get the unadvertised benefit of being hard to click on in PVP fights since compared to other races they are so small. It gives them a small edge since they are a little harder to target.

Drenai get a small bonus to jewel crafting professions. A bonus to shadow resistance. They also have either inspiring or heroic pressence. This grants party memebers a 1% chance to hit either melee or casting depending on what class you are. They also have a healing spell which is can come in handy paritcularly for warriors and rogues which have no natural healing ability.

Orcs get a small bonus to axes and pet damage. The also get a bonus to resist stunning effects it says 15% bonus but read the fine print first, It's not as great as it sounds. It means a 15% to your current resist. Not a flat 15% bonus. So if you have 10% base chance to resist stuns your orc would have 11.5% chance to resist, not 25%. They also have bloodfury. When activated it gives a nice bonus to attack power, which means more damage, at the expense that heals will be 50% less effective. Most of the time this is a good trade since most characters don't actively recieve heals. But I have screwed up and used this on a boss when I was main tank. Needless to say I couldn't be healed fast enough and caused a problem for my group. So this can be great, but use it wisely.

Undead, sometimes known as the Forsaken, get a bonus to shadow resistance. They can also be underwater 3 times longer than other races. This can come in handy in certain situations but not enough to say this is a great ability. The can also "cannnibalize" which means they can eat humanoid or undead corpses. It can save money on food or maybe come in handy if your first aid is on cooldown. I primarily used it to mock people by eating their corpse after killing them in PVP. The also get an ability called Will of the Forsaken. It can make you immune to fear, sleep, or charm. It's is awesome in PVP and has it's uses in PVE but not very frequently.

Tauren get a bonus to nature resistance and the herbalism skill. They also get a 5% bonus to health. It doesn't sound like much but I can't tell you how many times I died, where if I had gotten in one more hit I would have lived. They also get warstomp. It stuns up to 5 people for 2 secs. This is a good one for pvp and pve as it can interrupt spellcasting but you have to time it right since it has a casting time.

Trolls have a passive ability to regenerate health. It helps with down time and since it's 10% effective in combat it can help in those close calls but really isn't anything to be proud of. They get a small bonus to thrown weapons, bows, and damage against beasts. They have a beserking ability that increases their attack speed by 10-30% depending on how close to dieing you are. 10% at full health. I'm not sure of the health levels it uses to increase from 10% to the 30% max. It can come in handy in a pinch thats for sure.

Blood Elves get a small bonus to enchanting and to ALL resistances. They also have "mana tap" which drains a small amount of mana from target and gives you a charge of magical energy. This charge is used in the ability "arcane torrent" for classes with mana this gives you a bonus to your mana per charge of mana tap, for rogues it grants energy. It also silences casters around you for 2 secs. You don't have to have a mana tap to use arcane torrent and on my rogue I use this a lot to interrupt spell casting. Good for both PVP and PVE.