No reason to not know your stuff

In today's version of World of Warcraft there is no excuse to be uneducated about end game if you are planning to take part in it. If you're happily playing casual for battlegrounds or for roleplay or just completely casual, that's absolutely fine. If you're going to go into pug raids or guild raids then there is no excuse not to at least try to learn your stuff; be it class rotations to best enchants, sockets and gear and obviously; strategies.

It's my opinion that being casual does not mean you have to be a noob. With the introduction of Trial of the Crusader 10 and 25 man normal modes (default) you can prove you have at least the basic skill without the need for countless hours clearing trash. By being somebody who researches a little into their class for the benefit of the raid does not make you elitist or hardcore. It takes a few minutes to check up on things and making sure you're prepared is never a bad thing.

So, in the long and short here are some extremely useful links that most decent WoW players should know:

MMO-Champion this website is pretty much your number 1 website for your WoW news with upcoming patches and content. It's rather reliable and covers a wide aspect of the upcoming changes to the game. Definately check it out.

Wowhead is useful for when you need to find an item, NPC, quest or anything like that. Try not to hassle people in trade or general chat because you'll probably get flamed, or given useless information. If you can't find it on Wowhead, I don't know what's wrong.

Curse is your primary website for addons. I recommend definately getting the curse client as it'll make sure you're not downloading any bad files.

Warcraft Radio gives some good radio discussion and shows you can listen for WoW information. A personal recommendation is Blue Plz! by Total Biscuit the station owner. The show is an exaggerated look at the upcoming content, often in a negative view, but mostly it's just for the sake of the show, although you can often agree with TB and understand his viewpoint. Take it lightly if you do give it a listen and you should be very entertained. There are other shows there for other fun aspects of the game.

There's a multitude of other websites available for your WoW news but these are my personal favourites.