I'll be happy to delete this post if it's felt to be off-topic, but I was chatting to an RL friend today - cool guy, works hard, plenty of friends and a good social life. Has been playing for maybe a month or two. He's been a casual gamer for some time and has had zero MMO experience before. This is a chat I had with him on his Lv.42 shaman about 15 minutes ago:
He's also somehow familiar with the progression of instances and a few other little tidbits. Interestingly, he didn't know he could buy a mount at 40 or how to get to Badlands.
I don't mean this as "indicative" of anything, but rather as a statement that players can fall anywhere on a spectrum, and can be remarkably strong in some areas (for him, dps min/maxing) but weak in others (general knowledge).