Thanks to Amber Choo for testing and creating these instructions.
You will need around 11GBs of free hard drive space at the minimum!
1. Make your ‘battle.net’ account and download the World of Warcraft launcher here: https://us.battle.net/account/creation/wow/signup/ Be sure to select the correct region if it prompts you (pick Canada or Americas and Southeast Asia).
2. Boot up the WoW launcher you just downloaded (World-of-Warcraft-Setup-enUS.exe). It’s going to take a while! The full download is around 20GB, however you can stop it at 'playable mode' around 11GB and play (although it is supposed to be less smooth.) It took my average joe laptop about an hour to reach a ‘playable’ (around 40-50% download completion.) I tried it with a new character at that time, and there were no lag problems or issues.
3. When the launcher says it’s in a ‘playable’ state, press Play on the WoW launcher to log into World of Warcraft. It will ask you to select a realm. Let’s meet in the realm of Aggramar. I found it by selecting ‘Americas’ as the server location and a ‘Normal’ type of realm, then pressed ‘suggest server’. To see which server you are on, you need to be in the character selection screen (you can change servers from there too.) After you finish the realm prompt, the next time you login, it will automatically direct you to the character selection screen.
4. Create a new character in the character selection screen by hitting the red ‘create a character’ button on the right. We all need to be the same race in order to spawn in the same location. Please pick “Dwarf” from the selection on the left. Then, pick from the classes on the right and customize your character!
5. You will appear in Shadowglen by the NPC Illthalaine (he has a giant exclamation mark over his head.) Wait there for the rest of the class!