When Blizzard first proposed the boost to 90 feature at blizzcon the majority of the players supported it – because they realized the blizzard was correct, the vast majority of people taking advantage of it would not be new players but returning players wanting to play the new expansion but not wanting to spend ages catching up to their currently max-level friends. But those are not everybody, there are at least a few new players who will upon buying warlords of draenor receive their free boost to 90 – and this post is meant to help you figure out what to do first when you hit that level out of the myriad of features that become available.
When patch 6.0 brings the new level 90 starter zone a lot of this will be outdated but that could be months away – so I thought I'd give some suggestions for those boosting in the meantime. The first piece of advice I'll give however is – don't boost right away. This may be tempting but I highly reccomend you don't do it. Level normally until you hit level 60 first. This has several advantages – firstly you will learn some of the basics of how your class works in easier content – secondly you will get your professions automatically maxed out in skill level (I highly reccomend taking gathering professions – at least initially since this will max out your ability to make quick and easy money at maxlevel). That saves a lot of time and gold later on.
But now you're at level 90 – you have a tiny amount of gold to your name and you're in a strange place. The place you find yourself is your faction's shrine in the vale of eternal blossoms. This is your current gaming capital and in there you will find access to a bank, reforge, item-upgrade and transmog as well as profession trainers and – if you're an engineer even an auction house. Near the door should be people whose mouse-over icon shows a scroll-like object, if you talk to them they will conveniently mark the location of whatever you're seeking on your map for you.
You will also immediately see a quest pop up called "A Flash of Bronze" – pick it up, but don't go do it just yet, there's a bit of preparation you want to do first. Start by visiting noxxic.com and look up your class and spec. Right now you're not yet interested in everything (you will be once you start gearing up) but your most immediate concern is spell priority. You have a ton of new spells – noxxic will tell you which ones to use and when to use them. Secondly have a look at their reccomended talents and glyphs and acquire those – talent setting is essentially free, glyphs will cost you some gold so you may have to postpone actually doing those for a day or so to make some money first. It's senseless to waste gold on gems and enchants for the low level gear you have now – generaly you will want to start doing those only when for gear with an item-level of at least 496. However do have a look at stat priorities as these will tell you which gear items to seek out and, later, what stats to reforge (this is going away in the next patch but for now it's a critical thing).
What I suggest you do next is jump on a flying mount (you get flying skill for pandaria automatically when you boost) and fly south into the valley of four winds, find half-hill (your map is very valuable for this) and head down. There's a ton of quests there and you may want to do some for money/fun but right now pick up the quest from Farmer Yoon and the quest "So you want to be a chef" from the market. The latter is the start to your fastest and cheapest way to learn cooking skills. The former begins the process of unlocking your own private farm – you will clear boulders, plant your first crop and harvest it – initially you will have four plots to farm in but if you keep coming back daily to harvest and do the daily quests available here you will rapidly unlock more. Farming provides you cooking and other profession materials with great ease and will help you make money and learn your class against relatively easy enemies. You will also begin to acquire some valor points. Later when you have enough you'll use these to buy some 522 gear for slots you had bad luck in, and to upgrade gear you already have (don't waste it on anything below 522 however).
Once your done with the basic farming here, pick up the quest "Stranger in a strange land" from the guy near the inn, this will start you on the quest to get your legendary cloak – which is the best back armor in the game right now. The process takes a long time so you may as well start early.
Now you're ready to go get some better gear on the timeless ilse – go hand in the Flash of Bronze quest you got right at the start and you'll be transported there, pick up the flight point right away. You almost certainly want to do this with a friend or a guildy as your current gear will struggle against the mobs on timeless. Start by picking up the chests on the island – there's an excellent guide to their locations here. Then pick up the daily quests and do those – all together this will get you a lot of ilevel 496 gear tokens – which produce gear appropriate for your class and spec and you can get most slots upgraded to this level in about 2 hours. For the quests that require killing 20 elites and getting stones – I reccomend slaughtering the gulp frogs, they are not very hard to kill, there's a lot in one place and it goes quickly.
You'll be coming back to timeless isle every day for a while as you gear up further, but at this stage you are ready to start dipping your toes into tougher content. Do not qeue for LFR yet – you aren't geared high enough and you haven't had time to learn tactics. Start by running scenarios and then heroic scenarios (For a nice bonus fly back to where you first handed in the Flash of Bronze quest) and do the scenario quests there first as this will help. Once you're a bit higher you will be grouping up with 2 friends weekly to run the heroic scenarios for fast valor.
At this stage you will have gotten a fair idea how your class works, and your gear is improving. Now you have a few options available, you can play the older content on thundering isle and the incursion. You can acquire honor point gear and do pvp or focus on raid gear for pve. If you feel ready – you may be good to try some LFR raids – start by heading to youtube and watching fight videos on the raid you're about to qeue for – learn the boss mechanics and what will be expected of you in the raid first, then qeue up. LFR is the easiest level of raiding so you should be okay if you have a decent group and did your bit to study first. You will also be guaranteed gear drops in the lower level LFRs some of which will be upgrades and the rest you can sell for good money.
As your gear goes up – you can run tougher LFRs and start getting ready to run the flex and normal mode raids with your guild – and this is where the big next levels of gear start to drop.