Hi! I’ve for for a long time wanted to get into RP in WoW, but I’ve always found it intimidating to get into. I’ve read over the guides multiple times over, but the moment I actually boot up the game, it’s as if all of that becomes moot.
Worth noting that I’m interested in both Alliance and Horde RP
RP is something you do with other people - the first step is to find some other people who RP. For alliance Stormwind is usually a safe bet though the RP you’ll find there is generally fairly low stakes social RP. For Horde I am not best placed to comment, I’ve not played Horde on AD at all since Legion.
There’s also fairly regular events organised which you can find in threads on this forum on discord in one of the AD RP channels.
While RPers can be a bit spicy, most of us are fairly approachable and willing to give a newbie some time. I’d recommend starting with a fairly simple character concept for a couple of reasons:
My first experience with roleplaying was on a server ( Feenix, I think ) that wasn’t even a RP server. Someone was organising an event in Thunder Bluff where people would sit near the pond and tell stories. 50 people would show up, and maybe 5 of them would actually write a few paragraphs of their ‘recent exploits’.
The easiest way to get into roleplaying is to watch how others do it.
First, welcome to the beautiful world of RP and I hope you will like it here when you finally find the push needed for you to start in earnest !
For your question, the first approaches are often the most daunting. You’re faced with communities, often with people already interacting, and it’s just your own little self wondering where to even start. And that is perfectly normal, it’s like conversations with strangers IRL, it’s always spooky to approach people you don’t know.
A nice way to get to know people is very often to join a guild, or at the very least look like considering it. Alliance-side, you have more leeway of people just being there and hanging out anywhere, so the RP has a more “wild” approach where you can just pick someone you see in the street.
Horde-side, we don’t have that kind of luxury really. A lot of RP is based around guilds playing in themselves, then interacting with more guilds eventually to form a network of people accustomed to one another. You hardly find people randomly as you go about cities. So joining a guild is often the best way, but I also said “Appear as if you wanted” because heck, you don’t have to join, just showing interest can be the way to find friends without committing to a specific community.
Now, when it comes to actually starting as a person, you will find that just doing random acts while in public can do a lot if you’re a lot less savvy on starting conversations. Check something out, hang around a group while making emotes showing that you’re curious about what they’re talking, do not hesitate making emotes at people because then their Listener (Essential addon for big groups !) will notify them. And with that, you’re then 90% sure someone around will be like “Hey there, can I help you ?” and boom, conversation started !
That would work particularly well at the big events that were mentioned in the first answer, and as they said, this is a great place to meet many people with plentiful ways to do RP.
It’s always easy to say it like that considering how big a step it is, but the way to start RP is really just to make that one big step of hanging around people and being pulled in the fold. Once your foot is in, you will be surprised how much it will snowball !
Welcome to Argent Dawn! Believe me, we’ve all been where you are now, feeling too intimidated to approach and afraid of making mistakes to the point it’s debilitating. But as everyone here can attest, years from now when you’ve some experience under your belt, you’ll be looking back on this time fondly. Most people are accommodating if you let them know that you’re new and wish to learn the ropes.
I noticed this initiative and it might be worth keeping an eye out for when they advertise being open again. It might be a good way to learn in an environment designed for beginner RPers in mind to get introduced to the RP scene. Once you get confidence, the world is your oyster!
If you’re looking for lore guides to pad out your knowledge, we’ve got them for every situation. Have a look at the pinned posts at the top of the main Argent Dawn forum page.
I see you have gotten plenty of good advice already, so what I say you might already know!
So, for starters I want to link you a very useful page that a majority of us use to keep up about current events in the various communities.
There are Discords too, but for starters these two links will do 
Argent Dawn EU: https://discord.gg/BcDQ6QGy
An advice I got when I first started was, play a young character, or someone looking for X shop, or place, or pretend to want to buy something.
I have had the pleasure of interacting with lots of new role-players such as yourself during weekly markets and the soup kitchen in my community and, that is always welcome.
Often, they give me a whisper that they are new, and from there we work things out together so they get a better understanding of the world they step into.
It’s also worth mentioning for you, and perhaps others too,
that if you use the TRP 3 - roleplaying addon you have these neat features to show your roleplay experience.
