taultunleashed

I am looking for a new game to play and I was wondering if you guys could answer a few of my questions.

A little bit about myself; I've been playing FFXI for a couple of years and I am getting bored with it. The grind is horrible to me. The fact that if you want to be succesful you have to be a "cookie-cutter" job build has worn on me too. I like the social aspect of it, with the "Linkshells" (for those who are unaware it's a loose network of people who can talk to eachother, outside of public channels, no matter where in the game world they are). I am also fed up with the fact that you pretty much have to be a "hard-core" gamer to make decent headway in the game. I am limited to a couple of hours a night to play, so i need those hours to be productive.

From what I have read, this game seems pretty casual gamer friendly. I like the no fees aspect. Some things I am curious about are:
How is the game socially?
How is the economy, stable or filled with gold sellers/buyers?
Is the high end/premium equipment available to casual players or do you have to be "teh sup3r l33t g0ld bUy3rZ" to get it?
Does the game suffer from a lot of Bugs?
Is the community in general helpful to new players?
Is there still open PVP or has it been relegated to the "battlefields"?

Thanks for your help in advance.

Socially, there are peltny of people to play with, so, yeah... The economy isn't perfect, but you can usally afford stuff on the Auction house, unless it's Blue+. There are plenty of farmers, but you can just /ignore them.
Nah, you might have to run the instance or dungeon repeatedly, but they're about 2-3 hours each for high-end instances. For high-end content such as Molten core, 6 hours if you know what you're doing and move fast. ONyxia is a 15min fight though. There are some bugs, usually tiny annoying bugs. on the forums, we're pretty hepful And , if yuour on a PvP server, yeah, otherwise, it's battlegrounds. Also, WoW has a subscrption fee , like FFXI... but you just pay $15, not $13+characters.

instead of linkshells, you will want to get into a guild, they tend to be larger than a linkshell though. the thing i like about this game is you dont have to camp a NM to make money, the NMs spawn in an instance just for your party! although there are some rare spawns that appear with 8 hour spawn times in case you are addicted to camping NMs. You can solo to 60 with any job usually killing mobs your own lvl or higher. You can get money and xp by just doing quest. There is currently no party flag but there are meeting stones which people really never use. to get a party just go to Org or IF and shout there for a while. I dont think you will have to worry about molten core too much, its pretty much like dynamis or a promyvion. Most instances are about 1-3 hours long and are worth the time.

Thanks a lot, you guys have answered my questions perfectly:)

One more thing you should know- support for players is terrible, well enjoy your new game

normal server-many farmers, not much open PvP.

pvp server-not so many farmers. good deal of open pvp

rp server- i have no idea