Breakfast Topic: How do you roleplay in WoW?

I did a Breakfast Topic recently asking you all what your game was. This included a woefully inadequate poll, but it still gave me some interesting results to look at. There was the expected dominance of PvE endgame content, but that's not what I'm here to talk about today. I have just enough knowledge to be dangerous about most aspects of WoW; I could explain PvP and PvE to a non-player pretty easily. I could also make a relatively decent stab at achievement farming, professions and playing the Auction House.

But roleplaying ... now, that is a total mystery to me. I get that we're all playing roles to an extent — bar a recent Halloween fancy dress outfit, I'm not an orc shaman any more than I really could survive being beaten up by a huge dragon. But that, as far as I know, isn't what roleplaying is really about. I could be totally wrong, of course!

I think it has to do with creating a story for a character and then enacting it, but I have so many questions! Do you raid? Can your character's storyline encompass all aspects of gameplay? I can see how there may be a good amount of PvP involved, but are instances more troublesome? Do you quest? If you don't include normal gameplay, what do you actually do? What are the constituent parts of a few normal days of roleplaying in WoW? I'm intrigued to hear your stories!