TCO of WoW for new player?

I've got a buddy at work on the fence about starting wow, just single box, and it's been so long since I've purchased that I have no idea what to tell him about cost. Could anyone enlighten me? He'd want to do the RAF thing so does that mean he gets 10 days free then has to buy WoW for $30 from site and then BC for $30 more?

Sorry if it's a dumb question or easy to look up, just from what I've seen on the wow site it isn't very clear and I figured you guys/gals all have recent purchase experience.

Thanks

right now WoW Battlechest's (vanilla wow + TBC) are going for around 30-40 dollar, depending on store and if its on sale, plain cd-key's online are a bit cheaper, but than again, no box or install cd's

you can send him an invite trough the wow site, so he can start on his 10 day trial (and automaticly linking his account to yours, meaning a free mount for you, and 3x xp bonus when you AND him are leveling together in the same party with no more than 5 levels difference between each other, so no boosting)

make sure he has wow installed before starting the 10 day trial.. wow site does offer a download version, but that wastes the first 2 day's of the trial on download time :D

Also note that a RAF install from battlechest comes with a month and gives a month to the inviting account. 2 months = 2x $13-15. So the box cost is largely absorbed into what it would have cost you to play if you already had the accounts.

So, are you saying he can pick up a $30 battlechest and I can still RAF him?

It's starting to come back to me now, when his 10 days is over then he just has to supply the registration keys wherever he gets them right?

Yep. There are limitations on trial accounts, but you can still use it if you want to start before getting cdkeys, like if you order it online and don't want to wait for it to ship. The biggest restrictions are with chatting/grouping(I think you just have to add him as a friend to get around this), can't trade/ah, and can't go past level 20.