EDIT - This is an old post from before I took a break from WoW. Some of this info might be outdated at this point, but I thought it might still be helpful so I re-posted it.
Let's say you log into WoW today and decide you want to kill some rogues. Your going to have to do some preparation if you want to be successful. Without getting class specific, I am going to touch on the very basic topics of PvP for beginners.
1. Gear - You want to set yourself up with all the crafted PvP gear. There are about 8 pieces of PvP gear you can have crafted, I believe they are all called Bloodied (something or other). The chest, legs, shoulders, and helm, usually go for 1000g, the bracers, gloves, boots, belt are all usually cheaper, say 200g-600g.
2. Enchants, Gems - Starting off you have a choice to make between DPS and resilience (survivability). I prefer resilience while gearing up, once you have better gear, you will start to sacrifice resilience for more damage (your main stat). However, some players choose to stack resilience far past the 3,500 mark, this choice will depend on your team composition in Arenas or your preference in Battlegrounds, if you are a flag carrier for example, more survivability would be the way to go.
3. Spell Penetration - Used to counter classes with resistance buffs: paladins, druids, shamans, mages, etc... For every class except mages, 195 spell pen is enough. Mages have a little extra from their frost armor, 230, I believe. You should get the spell pen cloak enchant and a few gems to reach this limit. A quick note, the caster PvP cloak purchased with honor has spell pen on it and gems are unnecessary with the cloak enchant; however, the non caster DPS cloak does not have spell pen. For these classes, you can choose to stop at 190 spell pen by taking a hybrid gem, gaining extra DPS at the expense of the remaining 5 spell pen (I recommend taking this route).
4. Hit rating - As opposed to higher level mobs or raid bosses, other players only require 5% chance to hit. As is the case for most classes, do not enchant or gem for hit (unless your getting a good socket bonus), reforge to reach the hit cap.
5. Add ons - Deadly Boss Mobs includes a Battleground module that tracks many different timers in battlegrounds. Gladius is a widely used add on for arenas, replacing Blizzard's default arena frames, tracking trinket usage and cooldowns for your opponents. The most important aspect of your interface is going to be how quickly and easily you can find information like what buffs your opponent has up, what debuffs your partners have, the cooldown remaining on your abilities, and how long until your trinket is ready again. The add on NeedtoKnow is also good for tracking cooldowns or procs.
6. Battlegrounds - There is no point in going into strategy for individual battlegrounds until you are on a rated team. No one listens to each other or works together in pugs anyways. Stay with the group and you will increase your chance of living. Protect your healers and kill theirs.
7. Arenas - There are a few rules to know about arenas before queuing up. Abilities with 10 min or greater cooldowns are not usable in arenas, this includes Bloodlust, Army of the Dead, Lay on Hands. Another point, potions, flasks, scrolls, drums and food are also not usable. Water is usable, however. Also, just so you don't learn the hard way, players can be resurrected (not battle rez'd or soulstoned) if a player can manage to get out of combat long enough to cast the spell uninterrupted. A few minutes into a match the shadow sight power up appears on the map. This is used to see stealthed enemies that are hiding. Be warned, this comes with a debuff that causes you to take extra damage. There is a 45 minute time limit on each match, if one team does not win before then, each team is given a loss.
In addition to the rules of arena, I think it is also useful to understand the basic principles of attaining victory in arenas. I recently read a great summary of the very basic principle to winning arenas. Oonoes, explains on his blog that pressure is the key to victory. Pressure is damage, interrupts, and crowd control. He does a great job of illustrating this principle so please check out his article and the rest of his site if you are a hunter at It's a Trap.
8. Class Specifics - Once your ready to learn about your class, I suggest heading over to Arena Junkies strategy page. In addition to these guides, make use of their forums, there are so many skilled, helpful people over there offering advice.
Since my main class interests are the hunter and paladin, I have some additional resources to site.
Hunter
It's a Trap - Four part guide on each class you will encounter in arenas and how to handle them.
Kripparrian's Youtube Channel - These videos are not PvP specific but there is so much great info for a hunter that you will find them helpful in PvP and PvE. Especially watch the "macro/keybind" video and the "how to do top dps" video.
Paladin
http://retributionpaladins.com
http://www.retpaladin.com
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