more quest hubs in the zone

Are you able to group with or talk to people of opposing Guild Wars Gold races? E.g. If you are a human, can you group with or chat to an orc? If so, what language do they apparently speak?

Are Alliance and Horde Death Knights hostile to each other before they leave the starting area? And if so, can they just fight it out, or will guards intervene?
Horde and Alliance Death Knights actually are kept in seperate instances as they level up through the Death Knight starting quests. You will not encounter a Death Knight of the opposite faction until you hit Eastern Plaguelands.

As mentioned in the previous question, Alliance and Horde Death Knights are kept apart from one another, so grouping never comes into play until after you've exited the DK starting instance and entered Eastern Plaguelands. As it stands on the present beta realms, your Death Knight will speak whatever language is appropriate to their race.
Starting on the up side, I found that many of the quests linked together to form much more cohesive stories than previous. Even though the text wasn't much longer, Blizzard seems to have focused on many of the key story elements much closer in this expansion. As you move from quest to quest you get a better feel of what is going on in the area and why you are expected to help or do things.

It seems like a lot of work, but not everything is necessary to find a good guild. However, a combination of these tactics should work to give you some options to find your guild.

I also really enjoyed the fact that there are many more quest hubs in the zone. When WoW was originally released WoW Power leveling quests were all centered in the one or two towns in a zone. Then in the Burning Crusade Blizzard started to include at least a second quest hub area in each zone, some zones having three or more, for example Blade's Edge Mountains. In Wrath of the Lich King, at least in the first zones, there are many more small quest centers. This allows you to move around with quests and not have to return to one central area all the time.