New to server - need advice

[enchant1]

I'm fairly new to this server (I'm playing on Icecrown). My first toon is a little over lvl 20 and I need some advice. Please read the entire post before calling me a whiner. I'm not complaining about the queues or that no one will give me gold or power level me. There are a million people online who are making it on their own and I just want to educate myself on the best way to do that.

Several years back, I played on another server, which seemed to have the same exp rate as this server, but the drop rate for gold and especially items was quite high. So while you advanced quickly, you'd also quickly get the dropped gear necessary to face the higher lvl mobs. On this server, the drops seem more like what I'd expect on a blizzlike server. So when I face lvl 20 mobs, I get my *** handed to me, because I've got lvl 5 gear.

I'm a miner/blacksmith, and I'm making decent gold from that. I've been able to buy FAR better gear than I see dropping. So that's good, but is this the only way?

Searching around for questions like mine, the common answers I see are to make gold via a profession like I'm doing, or join a guild. The problem with a guild is that no one is going to invite me to a decent guild. I'm going to be invited to some infant guild that just wants to quickly inflate their ranks until the newbie guild master gets sick of running a guild of newbs and abandons it next week. Any guild worth a damn is only interested in well-geared and experienced lvl 80 players that are ready to raid today. To paraphrase Groucho Marx, I'm not interested in joining any guild that would accept me.

So... Am I doing it right? Is it just a matter of fight and level up until my gear is too under-powered, then create/sell copper bars for a few days till I can afford better? Seems like kind of a tedious long term solution, but if that's what it is, so be it.

[Disktrasa]

Weapons is what matters when you level, at least when your a melee class.

Rogues and warriors are notorious for being harder to level, At least for rogues up to the point where your ambush gets 50% crit chans (sub tree), That's when it all turned easy on my rogue.

if you want a big leveling guild I suggest joining "ohdo"