they didn't have the share quest thing until recently, and it is a good idea that they implemented really well (and I'd be surprised if anybody suggested it... it honestly seemed to come out of nowhere from player feedback). beforehand people had to say where you go to get quests and all that. and the difficulty's really just what level you are for the quest... 5 or more levels below the quest level (generally the level of the guys you have to kill) = red, 3-4 = orange, 1-2 = yellow, and below that are green (2 levels above) and gray (by anywhere from 5-10). you can solo a lot in this game... it's kind of a shame i'm not in the stress test, because it'd be fun to help you guys level up, explore, etc. enough to at least try out the level 20ish instance dungeon for each side.
and my general dislike for alliance is just that I don't really enjoy playing as any of the races. I kind of like the design of dwarves and gnomes, but not enough to play one (I really hate the gnome voices). humans are so... bleh. I've had fun making anything but generic white guys with humans, but they all still sound like generic white guys. and night elves, well, they're night elves. I can't stand elvish fantasy races, which is why my goal in retail is to kill as many night elf players as I can at higher levels. Horde races don't have quite as much content (there's just a spot between levels 28 and 32 where there aren't many quests) but I've found they have a lot cooler areas to level in, and at least as a Shaman you get a very big sense of being a hero to the horde. Undead are one of those races that have a real cool factor to them that will make them pretty popular (plus they're a good mage race in pvp if that's your choice) but I've grown to really like orcs and taurens the most. The Tauren home area has some cool quests and I like the native american theme, while with the Orcs you get a real sense of establishing a home for the new horde and exploring this untamed world of Kalimdor.
Also, if you're a fan of the Warcraft series, there are a lot of cool areas you can visit from the series in the game - places like Stonard, Stromguarde, Strahnbrad, and a lot of others that are locked off atm. The lower level areas underwhelm me now (just from being so used to them) but even repeated visits to higher level areas always leaves me feeling impressed... it's not like they don't have good content at lower levels, it's just that they've had more time to work on the higher level areas, and they're really well-detailed and some of them are vast. Also, the game has an awesome sense of humor - tons of easter eggs referencing everything from other Blizzard games to movies and books, all of it pretty good tongue-in-cheek stuff.
I don't really recommend the pvp servers. The best way I can describe it is they're more or less like one big battleground for horde vs alliance. This generally means the alliance has way bigger numbers and higher levels (because they just have more content put in up to about level 40) so you're either on one side with a significant numbers and levels advantage, or another side where you're going to have it rough. In retail, though, I think the pvp servers will be a lot more fun... but Blizzard's also said they're going to put in at least one instanced pvp battleground in the beta so we can test it, which if it's good enough will sate all of my pvp thirst (plus you CAN pvp on the regular servers, it's just a lot more based around consent - i.e. I frequently ride my orc shaman into darkshire to kill some guards and get the attention of other players when I want to pvp).
