u need to buy each of the expansion to access the contents, cant skip

well u can register your account it will give a trial run, you trial up 2 wotlk expansion b4 deciding to buy.

the entire WoW is like 20gb lol it will take a while very long while, but if u look at the launched, there is 3 phase, once it reach 2nd phase you can start playing but not full content though

lol its easy to lvl this days, you are probably use to the private server settings

i dled my wow at 200kb/s took me 3 days i think, what you can do is copy from a friend, else you can dl the game b4 activating the trial, this way you will get your full 10 days trial

note: the trial is to give you access to the game with some minor limitations(such as level,unable to access auction house n etc) other than that you pretty much have full access to the game there for requires the full game