In terms of classes, trying to cover all three roles between the two of you is a good target. When you guys are questing together by yourselves, having one person be DPS and the other healing helps keeps downtime to a minimum. And if you guys decide to use the Dungeon Finder, having one person able to heal and the other be able to tank ensures you'll never have to wait long in the queue.
Blizzard has homogenized the classes over the years so there is a tremendous amount of overlap between the classes and specs. As long as you guys cover the three class roles, feel free to choose whatever fancies you.
For reference the hybrid classes are:
- All three roles: Paladins, Druids
- DPS + Healing: Priests, Shamen
- DPS + Tanking: Warriors, Death Knights
If you're going to take my advice about role coverage, you'll want to avoid Mages, Hunters, Warlocks, and Rogues as they can only be one role: DPS.
Since you're talking 1-85 play, Death Knights are off the table as they start at level 55.
Putting it all together:
- Person 1: Paladin, Druid, or Warrior (to cover tanking)
- Person 2: Paladin, Druid, Priest, or Shaman (to cover healing)
In terms of professions, I'd avoid the heavy crafting professions that take a lot of time to level up and are usually taken for the Bind-on-pickup endgame recipes: Blacksmithing, Tailoring, Engineering, Leatherworking. Instead, focus on the professions that'll let you help each other out while leveling, like Enchanting and Alchemy, or the gathering professions, like Mining and Skinning, which will prove lucrative and won't require too much (if any) time soloing.
So there's two real issues here.
How to start near your Friends
The first is a question of start location. In WoW, this is wholly dependent on your race. As of Cataclysm, each race has it's own unique start location, which means that if you pick different races, you will not be 'born together'.
HOWEVER:
It is extremely easy to get to the capital cities, and you reach these at about level 5, after completing your starting zone. And once you're in one capital city, it is very easy to get to any other capital city.
So my advice: if you don't mind playing separately for the first five levels (should take about an hour or so, if you go slowly), play whatever race you want.
All roads lead to Orgrimmar, the Orc capital -- if your friends play Undead, there's a zeppelin in the undead capital to take you to Orgrimmar, and if your friends want to play a Blood Elf, there's transport from the blood elf capital to the undead capitol, and from there you can get to Orgrimmar the same way. Tauren also have a zeppelin (from their capital) to Orgirmmar as well, these days. Thanks, Powerlord
The Alliance has similar arrangements with Stormwind as the hub.
On the Tank / DPS / Healer trinity
First off, every class can do damage. While you might hear grumblings on the forums that one class or the other is 'better', Blizzard generally does a good job at keeping people even. Never let someone else convince you the class you picked is 'bad'. Blizzard does not make 'bad' classes. But everyone has a personal preference, and invariably these preferences clash, and so you get the "Nerf Wars" chorus, summed up by the pithy:
"Dear Blizzard--
Paper is fine. Please nerf Rock.
Sincerely, Scissors"
Damage Dealers
While all classes can deal damage, there are four classes that can exclusively deal damage. That is to say, they cannot tank or heal -- they simply don't have the options. These classes are the following:
- Mage
- Warlock
- Hunter
- Rogue
Healers
Likewise, there are 4 classes capable of healing, totaling 5 unique subsets of healer. They can cast heals on other players, resurrect dead friends, and otherwise mitigate death and damage. These classs are as following:
- Priest (Discipline)
- Priest (Holy)
- Paladin (Holy)
- Shaman (Restoration)
- Druid (Restoration)
Tanks
Finally, there are 4 classes capable of tanking. This means mitigating damage, taunting mobs into hitting you first (and the party later), and other 'defender-y' things.
- Warrior (Protection)
- Paladin (Protection)
- Druid (Feral Combat)
- Death Knight (Blood)*
The Death Knight is a special case, as they are not available to players just starting out. The class becomes available when one of your characters reaches level 55.
Class Conclusions
As you may have noticed, Paladins and Druids showed up on both the "Tank" and "Healer" lists. They are good candidates if you or your friends want to potentially fill any of the roles.
My personal suggestion is that selecting any of the 6 'hybrid' classes is a good choice for starting character, just in case you want to switch roles later. The other thing is that though these classes can spec for these roles starting at level 10, they generally won't be needed while leveling up via quests etc. Three DPS specs will likely progress much faster than a dedicated tank, DPSer, and healer. The exception is if you want to run a dungeon (called an instance) with your pals, where the three roles are strongly encouraged (more so at the highest levels).
However, starting at level 30, your character can purchase the ability to alternate between two separate talent configurations (often referred to as 'dual spec') which means you and your pals can stick as 3 DPSers while questing, and break into your roles when you go dungeon diving. Depending on the exact class, this may require at least carrying around a spare shield in your inventory.
In Conclusion (TLDR)
WoW is a very social game, and any three classes will work well together. Likewise, it is quite easy to meet up, so don't let starting in different areas prevent you from playing what you want.
It's your character. Play what you want. WoW will make it work.
There's little worse than sinking time and money into a character you're only half invested in.
Best Answer
First I'll go through speeds without mounts (assuming you're inside - which excludes druids travel form):
Fastest passive on Foot
Hunter - they have access to Aspect of the Cheetah and Glyph of Pathfinding, which increases movement speed by 38%.
Fastest speed on foot when using activated abilities
Rogue - Stealthed rogue with the bonus is 131% (which is slower than the hunter), but you can use Burst of Speed infinitely which will bring it up to 204%.. in addition they can occasionally use sprint which is a temporary speed boost that totals at 220%.
Runner up - Paladin - with the correct talent and always having 3+ holy power, they can run fast as well.
Now let's talk about mount speed.
Death Knights and Paladins are tied when on mounts. I'll talk about flying mounts for the sake of numbers.
Death Knights have access to Pale Horse, and Paladins have access to Crusader.. if you have those with the fastest possible flying mount skill and the fastest type of mount (310%), and have the guild perk which increases mount speed, you can get up to a total of 392%.
As for stacking movement effects.. not many effects stack with each other as of Cataclysm/MoP. Some examples:
Carrot on a Stick will indeed increase your movement speed, but it does not stack with effects such as Crusader. Therefore, once you get crusader, the movement speed bonus from Carrot on a Stick becomes useless.
Mithril Spurs also becomes obsolete when you get the guild perk "Mount Up". The same goes for Riding Crop and the Riding Skill enchant.
In conclusion, the fastest mounted classes are Paladins and Death Knights, while the fastest class on foot is the Rogue.