1.) to those who played high level in open beta, do you find that the holy trinity approach happens in group/instances?

IE will you need a priest as healer or will druids/shaman/paladins do?

2.) How close in efficiency would you say a druid stacks up to pure classes
Cat vs Rogue
Bear vs War/Pal
Caster vs Priest

3) When you group, is the mobs xp value split among the group
or does everyone get full xp?

4) How do Quests vs Hack and Slash compare XP wise

5) Is WoW as friendly to "Boxing" as EQ is? What class pairings do you think would work best?

1) n/a in my case

2) unknown, never played a druid but I understand the druid forms != to the class, perhaps as high as 80% effective

3) xp is split, sort of. You also get a bonus for the number of people in a group. Since the majority of your xp comes from quests, this is trivial as the quest reward is not bonused or split. No GRINDING occurs in WOW unless you want to for some awful reason.

4) covered in 3. Quests give you mucho reward in xp, items and money. Trying to grind will make you an unhappy player.

5) combat is quick and intensive. 2 boxing is possible but it is a feat in dexterity. Each class has their own strengths and weaknesses. This isn't just lip service it is true. You play more with your brain and tactics than with stats and numbers in this game. If you do it that way, you live. It is possible to resort to the old EQ trinity and not have to think but that isn't fun for me.

1 - not sure, never made it to an instance in Beta, but I know that rezzers are very important in there, so a priest or paladin is a necessity

2 - not sure what you mean by efficiency. Cat doesn't dish out damage quite as good as a rogue. Bear isn't as good a tank as a warrior, and the caster isn't as good a healer as a priest. All forms are secondary in terms of what they can do compared to a "full" class.

3 - mob xp is split, but you get grouping bonuses. Plus you are killing more mobs faster so that moves xp quicker. For terms of pure xp grinding though solo seems to be faster (up to level 20 at least - that's as high as I got in beta)

4 - quests are great experience. Usually I find I get more experience from completing the quest than I got from killing whatever mobs were involved. For instance, if I have to kill 15 mobs, I get more xp from the NPC upon completion than I got from killing the actual mobs. For the most part - there are exceptions.

5 - I've debated 2-boxing, and so far I just haven't felt the need. In Everquest I pretty much needed to 2-box to solo at higher levels. I haven't gotten that high in WoW, but I'm not sure how to 2-box. The macro system is different and without a full understanding of that, it would make it hard.

1. I did quite a few instances in the Beta; BRD, BRS, Strath. A Restoration specced Druid is absolutely a viable healer, but Rebirth doesn't cut it as a rezz. You always have to have a Pally/Priest with you. I had a lot of fun one night in BRS with a Shadow Specced Priest for wipe insurance and me as primary healer.

2. Here is my take on our efficiecies versus other classes at lvl 60.
- Mage DPS - 60%
- Priest Healing - 90% (Better than Shadow Priest, less than Holy Priest)
- Warrior tanking - 50%
- Rogue DPS - 60%
Surprise...Surprise at level 60 we are healers.

3. Mob exp is split, and I beleive they have a groupin bonus now. I have all that turned off as a rule.

4. Do not grind. Instead, get quests and grind while you are questing. For example, kill and collect quests are killer. Some even overlapp so you can be killing Troggs in Loch Modan, while colelcting their teeth, and getting mob exp. Once you have everyhting done you do your quest turn in for juicy exp. Unless you aren't in a hurry, you should always be working on a quest.

5. I would think 2-boxing would be difficult without some serious macro's or scripts in play. A really slow, safe duo is Pally/Druid, on the faster, scarier side is Druid/Mage or Druid/Rogue. Really scary is Rogue/Mage. All of these would be a stretch for Elite quests. Trios are great for Elite quests.

I've yet to reach anything near what you'd call "high level," but I think I can answer some of your questions.

I agree with Kristan above, quests are huge bonuses to your xp. The only time I ever really solo creatures to grind is when I'm farming items like wool or linen for friends. I've killed creatures to grind out the last few hundred remaining xp to level, but I can't see doing it for an entire run, that'd seem so tedious, especially when doing one or two quests can nearly double or triple the return for fighting (probably) the same creatures.

As for dual boxing, a friend of mine was trying it out and he said it's annoying even with follow options. Various mob attacks stun and make you lose follow - you also aggro a lot more creatures. Plus, as Delacroix said, combat is fast and furious - even if you had a tank/priest combo, you'd be stuck basically hitting auto-attack and popping off a heal now and then. No spiffy cast, tank, nuke, heal combos, it just goes way too fast. I've even had trouble keeping track of healing group members in general combat, I can't (currently) imagine handling multiple characters.

1.) to those who played high level in open beta, do you find that the holy trinity approach happens in group/instances?
IE will you need a priest as healer or will druids/shaman/paladins do?

It is there to some extent anyway, but not as bad as in previous games. Druids and Shamans both heal well. Typically, the fact that druids have limited rez capabilities is more limiting for them as main healer than anything, but a shaman/druid team or paladin/druid team works quite nicely for rezzing and healing. And as someone who plays a priest, I love having a druid, shaman or another priest in the group for help on healing for the tougher mobs or bad pulls.

Also, I have used druids as main tanks before (though it is tough against harder elite mobs).

2.) How close in efficiency would you say a druid stacks up to pure classes
I don't really know, I haven't played enough with druids to say, but it is definately less efficient than each "parent" class, as is really has to be.

3) When you group, is the mobs xp value split among the group
or does everyone get full xp?
As others have said, split but with a small group exp bonus.

4) How do Quests vs Hack and Slash compare XP wise
Questing>>>>>Grinding, the only places worth grinding through IMO after quests are done is instances since elite mobs give decent exp and good loot.

5) Is WoW as friendly to "Boxing" as EQ is? What class pairings do you think would work best?
Not as friendly to boxing as EQ IMO. In EQ it was possible to play 2 classes in a group and the group would never know, I don't think that would work in WoW at least they would think one or both was a bad player, though you could probably blend in with the other bad players ;) Just for your own "help with soloing", sure you can two-box and give yourself that extra boost to kill more mobs, but you can solo fairly effectively without needing this anyway. My husband will box my priest sometimes when I am gone and he can heal himself pretty easily and have me auto-follow, but anything more than that is tough without severly cutting the dps of his rogue.

Is there an autofollow command?

I thought I tried /follow and it didn't work.

It's /follow - works fine, but almost anything seems to cancel it (attack, spells, etc). You should get a heads up display saying "Following So-and-so".

Another question.

So people in Horde and Alliance can't group. How far does this split extend:

1. Can they send /tells to each other?

2. Can they use the mail system to each other?

Another question.

So people in Horde and Alliance can't group. How far does this split extend:

1. Can they send /tells to each other?

2. Can they use the mail system to each other?
I play on an RP server. We can't send /whispers or mail. Doing a /who will not list them. We can see them and interact with them (fight them in PVP) but as we are role playing, our interaction is limited at best since we're in a state of war with each other.

As far as grinding goes, yeah it's not worth it. The quests, generally, direct your exping spots. I'm not going to be killing Gnolls when I have 2 quests that involve killing Orcs. The only time I do grind is when I need Tailoring components or really need to get a level to tackle the next batch of quests. That's pretty rare though.

Also as a sidenote, as a level 25 Mage I find that any fight that goes longer than 45 seconds to a minute will pretty much guarantee me dead or running. Combat is fast and furious. I have a soloing strategy that relies on casting certain spells in a certain order but it still is boiled down to me burning the mob to a cinder as fast as possible. Very satisfying compared to my old Cleric.

I play on an RP server. We can't send /whispers or mail. Doing a /who will not list them. We can see them and interact with them (fight them in PVP) but as we are role playing, our interaction is limited at best since we're in a state of war with each other.
.

Are all servers like this?

I have some friends on both sides of the aisle on Zul'Jin
does anyone know if I will be able to tell both sides and /mail both sides?

No tells or mail between factions. Someone said cross-faction chat channels work, but I have not tested this. There is a cross-faction auction house in Gadgetzan.

All servers are like that. You can't cross-tell or cross-mail

No tells or mail between factions. Someone said cross-faction chat channels work, but I have not tested this. There is a cross-faction auction house in Gadgetzan.

You definitely can join chat channels to talk to your cross faction buddies.
I read somewhere you could group across factions, but I have not tried this myself yet.

5) Is WoW as friendly to "Boxing" as EQ is? What class pairings do you think would work best?

It's probably better. You can macro some things and ALT+TAb works as is. The game is different, though. You don't really need to two box in WoW unless you are really into two boxing. All classes can solo and you have just one friend to play, you'll have a blast rolling through quests.

I had a lot of fun one night in BRS with a Shadow Specced Priest for wipe insurance and me as primary healer.

What's a shadow specced priest? Sounds interesting.

Ohh and Kerech you can bind a key to follow as well, so you dont have to type /follow.

Edit: NM I get it now, a priest who has spent their points in shadow instead of holy.

Shadow Priests spec to damage, and from what I read they do a pretty nice job of it. They can still provide back up heals and a rez to the party and supposedly solo fairly well too.

Well, a friend and I tested out cross-faction chat channels today, and it didn't work. Did you try it in beta or after it went live? It might have been changed recently...

We had one going for TDG during beta :( too bad it doesn't work now, but i guess it makes sense.