Nostalrius Begins - Quality wow vanilla realm (1.12)

Hello!
I have just created an account here having no experience in Vanilla WoW.

I suffer from severe altoholism and want to finally put an end to this madness.
I would love to settle on a single character, but I need some advice from you first.

I've been doing some Google research for the past few days regarding how Hunter, Mage, Warlock and Priest worked in Vanilla PvE (also I'm going to go Alliance for a change).
I have a rough idea of each of these classes, but I'd like to get some sort of a ranking of popularity/how many people play this class, difficulty of levelling, mana management and ease of getting into groups/how many of each get into a raid.
I'm mostly inclined towards giving a Priest or a Warlock a try as I've never had a chance to make it to max level with them. But I'm afraid that as a Priest I will only be allowed to go as a healer and I'm not too fond of that role. Damage all the way!

Thank you in advance for any bits of advice!

Of the four priest is the hardest to level.
The demand for dps priests in raids is close to none. The demand for hunters is there but it's definitely lower than mages/warlocks. Usually no more than 4 hunters, ever, while you can get anywhere from 4 to 7 mages/locks easily.
That's for raids, though. In 5-mans anything goes

A warning: dpsing is kinda boring tbh (at least as mage/warlock). You just press your frostbolt/shadowbolt button 90% of the time. So if you want altoholism immunity, you may want to go with something more versatile. Unless you plan to pvp too, in which case no class is boring.

Here's the Nostalrius population census for level 60, taken pretty recently. You can find the entire thread here: https://forum.nostalrius.org/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3641&start=200



Most guilds take one Spriests, but you will have a harder time finding a guild and you definitely won't be the top dps. What the above guy said is pretty much true.

Vanilla dps rotations are definitely not rocket science, so be prepared for that.

Thanks for the info! I will take it all that into account.