New to beta

[Ruvanal]

You can find some helpful points on the game basics here.
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/basics/

And on the chat commands here.
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/basics...hcommands.shtml

There is also a file installed with the game that can help. The file is "ReadMe-ENG.html" and is located in the Readme subfolder in the games installation folder.

Then I joined the lurker channel.

Dis you join lurker or lurkers. Most of us are using the lurkers channel and that 's' will make the difference. But as Tal noted most of the discussions are in the guild chat so even the lurkers channel can be very quite most of the time.

But have no idea how to tell if anyone else is in the channel. Or how to speak to them if I could.

The commands that you would use are '/chatinfo #' for who is in channel and '/# <message>' to send a message to that channel. If you have not exited the two default channels then the lurkers channel should be on number(#) 3 for what you need to type in.