Larsen

I'm fairly sure Anastari Heirloom doesn't exist at launch. It doesn't appear on archived item lists until after patch 1.4, either. I like wearing four pieces of Dreadmist in the pre-1.4 period. You already have a couple of slots where there's nothing particularly good with SP, like wrists and feet, and then you just have to substitute two more of your weakest slots for Dreadmist. You'll lose a little bit of SP, mitigated by the +23 from the 4-piece bonus, but you gain incredible amounts of stamina compared to wearing what's otherwise considered pre-raid BiS but has little to no stam/int on it. You'll have a hard time as a warlock if you're running around with like 2800 life and 3500 mana. I think this gave something like 400 more life (and a few hundred mana as well) at the cost of like 30 SP compared to simply wearing the highest SP piece in every slot, most of which has no stamina. I even wore Blood of the Martyr in BGs instead of one of the 10 SP rings that are otherwise pre-BiS next to Underworld Band. That's definitely worthwhile on a PvP server, and sometimes raiding as well, though it depends on the boss and you should still get the SP pieces. If you can get yourself over 3300 life unbuffed, you'll do well in PvP when everyone's at that gear level.

Should be in the ZG patch if they change anything. Not BWL, that's too early. The Blizzlike route would be kind of bad for a fresh server where everyone knows their item progression from the start and some have already done the grind on Nostalrius. It would kill the motivation for some of the hardcore PvP crowd. However, claims that this will "destroy PvP entirely" are a bit far-fetched; the vast majority of players never even think of getting to R13/14 and wouldn't be affected. Retail vanilla had a PvP scene and nobody in their right mind would say that PvP was pointless until the last patch of vanilla. The upgraded epic PvP gear is a little on the strong side for the ZG patch, but Naxx is too long to wait. If it has to be either 1.7 or 1.11, the best choice is probably 1.7, but there are still some valid balance concerns with this. Some classes benefit so much from the PvP gear that having it during the ZG patch is controversial. ZG itemization isn't a tier above BWL, it's just more widely available because more people can raid ZG, so the actual difference between PvE and PvP gear doesn't change much by waiting for the ZG patch. As such, balance concerns apply the same to BWL and ZG. It's more about the excessive wait for 1.11, which is probably worse for the server than the balance issue. You can see why they would consider going Blizzlike, though. It's against the spirit of the game for the best geared players on the server to have gotten there by doing nothing but mindless premades all day. It isn't that great for the PvP scene, either. A lot of the PvP problems on Nostalrius stemmed from the fact that so many people were far too obsessed with grinding honor and racking up wins at all cost because the benefit was so insanely huge. This meant that you had very little chance to be someone in PvP unless you did the same, which is barely possible if you have a life outside WoW, and made for a PvP environment that usually wasn't actually fun because of the methods used. It would actually be fair to say that the fast-tracked Nostalrius way is really bad for everyone who doesn't do the grind themselves, because it heavily affects how people approach PvP due to the staggering difference that the early availability of the upgraded PvP gear makes. It suppresses everybody else by making the PvP scene a ruthless arms race of permanent premades, instance hopping and things like that. It has a very negative influence on the BG scene and the way that it compels players to exploit it.

Every newbie region has a quest for a wand around level 14ish. It's a bit long to wait compared to getting an enchanter wand at 5, but those might just not be available at all for the first couple of days. Look up wands in a database, sort from lowest to highest level and find the one that comes from a quest in your area. This is the Barrens one: http://db.vanillagaming.org/?quest=863 Doable at level 14, but you probably need one or two people there to help you. There's almost certainly going to be plenty of people anyway.

If you have a high DPS wand, the Voidwalker can't really hold aggro consistently through dot+wand. It's just how it is. You might actually consider not training the highest level of Torment, because while the mana cost doubles, the threat generated doesn't. It loses aggro either way around 60-70% of the way through the fight. After a few mobs, pet mana becomes a limitation more than its threat generation and you'll get a smoother grind out of keeping its Torment one level below max. You can't select a lower rank if you've trained a higher one so be mindful of this when training your pet. After level 40, I had better results leveling with a Dark Pact drain spec. You just take the drain talents and Dark Pact and dot+drain-tank mobs. Pet aggro becomes irrelevant then and you have literally no downtime at all, it's just smooth sailing. You alternate between Lifetap and Dark Pact to recover mana, usually with one Lifetap after killing a mob (you'll have full hp from drain-tanking it) and Dark Pact when you don't have full life. Use either imp on passive (its DPS costs mana) or succubus with just auto-attack. Imp has more mana regen for Dark Pact but provides no damage while succubus' auto-attack does about as much damage as one dot so you kill faster but might have to occasionally bandage yourself because you don't get as many Dark Pacts per minute. I liked having the succubus out in case of ganks but only the imp gave me absolutely no downtime between kills because the extra mana meant I almost never had to Lifetap. With succubus I sometimes had to bandage but got maybe slightly more xp/hour because of faster kills if I was in a place that had enough mobs for it. This spec took me to 60 without any trouble. It was way nicer to play than the normal Voidwalker+wand style where you have to wait for pet mana a lot and struggle with aggro. I imagine having succubus up will be really convenient on fresh PvP because of frequent ganks. You can fight more than one mob at a time by keeping the other(s) feared and dotted, but it doesn't seriously save you time because you'll end up clearing everything in sight as soon as it respawns anyway, and fighting multiple mobs means you spend too much mana on things other than killing your target. It also leaves you way more open to ganks. Single target drain-tanking means you're always at full life, facing only one mob, and you can have your succubus ready to CC anyone who jumps you. It's super safe.

Most guilds want a couple more mages than warlocks generally, so the greater number of mages isn't a big issue. I honestly wouldn't base my decision on this because you'll be happier playing the class you prefer even if you have to be in another guild. There'll be one with room. I'd only give it any thought if it concerns rogue where you truly can struggle to find a place if you don't start out with a guild from the beginning. Likewise, do not base your class choice on how difficult leveling is or how easily you can get a mount. This won't make you happier in the long run. It doesn't matter whether it takes you three or four weeks to hit 60. Once you're there, it's a thing of the past. You can always farm for your mount, too. Warlock and mage are roughly equal in terms of DPS, with warlock maybe slightly ahead unless you get to be the best geared mage in your guild and take the lion's share of the ignite damage. That'll put a mage ahead, but not all of them. As a mage, you have to be frost for the first long while and this spec doesn't quite fulfill the DPS potential of the class, so you might not top the meters during the MC/BWL period. It's still possible but don't expect it. Warlock DPS is generally good and you more or less stay in the same general place throughout all of vanilla. You get a nice +15% boost in the ZG patch because shadow priests become viable and provide that debuff for you. If you're horde, threat can be somewhat of an issue and you may be threat capped at some points during vanilla. This wasn't a huge deal on old Nost but probably will matter now because of the nerfed rage gains for tanks. All in all, both classes are fairly comparable in both performance and playstyle (spam 1 forever lul) but warlock is a very convenient class to play because you have a lot of nice utility like summoning, soulstones, healthstones, and unlimited mana. You're pretty self-sufficient and you can PvP and PvE in the exact same spec without missing out on anything meaningful, and your gear has a lot of stamina so it works very well it in PvP, too. This all makes it a pleasant class to play. Hardly anything to worry about or any costly decisions. Farming soul shards is honestly not that much of an issue, you can just take 20 minutes to do it in WPL or something near Kargath. If you bring a bag of shards to the raid and make sure you drain souls from trash mobs, you shouldn't have problems. It was never a concern for me, I just always made sure to have one full bag of shards at all times and I didn't even have to think about it before raids.

edit: nothing nvm

The sooner there's two PvP servers to choose from, the better. The vast majority want to play on a PvP server but there's only one available, so ridiculous lag and overcrowding is unavoidable. With two PvP realms, people who don't want to suffer through that can choose the old server which will be probably half the current size when the fresh server is open. It's the only thing that'll alleviate the problem.