World of Warcraft is a awesome game imo. I played it for 2 years. Just recently tired my lvl 70 full tier 4, partial tier 5 Fury Warrior. The monthly fee really isnt that bad. I'd still be playing but I don;t have the time to raid 5 hours night 5 times a week anymore and pvp disgusts me.
Ya, I would try and not make the mistake I made and not buy WoW.
Its kinda cool i guess, but all there really is to do is grind.
If you want to play for free, go to a private server, although they are very buggy and some abiltys don't work correctly, its free, and alot of them are instant lvl 70 servers so you can get down to the PVP action and ditch the long term grinding nonsense.
theres so many private servers out there that arnt bothered im not even sure if its against blizzards contract to play on them, its a matter of changing a single line of text in your WoW directory.