Kara is a 10 man raid. What armour does you toon wear, leather, mail, etc? They are half right about picking up epics. I got a BT LW design for leather shoulders. They are the 4th best shoulders for a rogue in wow atm. (Only cost me 1200g). do this make/buy - bg/arena - heroic - kara and so on. Dont disregard pvp gear. most of it owns pve gear. The Brutal set (Season 4) really owns. apparantly the one handed swords is better than the warglaives.
i'm a lvl 42 rogue night elf. The higher lvl guys in my guild have made me pretty awesome kit for my lvl. Much nicer than the things I pick up in quests / drops etc - in return I normally get them skins and gems.
The only sucky thing is my weapons - I reverted to buying weapons off the AH last night just to be a bit less lame. I've been giving mats/disenchantable stuff to a mate who is the same lvl as me to get his enchanting off the ground. He went from nothing to about 250 in no time... so hopefully he can get me some nice lightsaber-glowing enchants on my weapons.
It's actually real nice playing this game in a friendly/laid back guild where everyone helps each other without expecting stuff in return. - I can imagine the game becoming quite boring at times if that weren't the case.