This game rules if you can get into it. In some ways it feels like a proto-ffxiv but in many others it's a whole different beast. It's very much not for everyone with some of it's "fuck you, now die" levels of difficulty and the often detrimental but appreciated focus on immersion, i.e. having to walk.... EVERYWHERE (I love it). You won't get much direction unless you surf the wikis and other resources or talk to other players, but when you come out on top of the challenges the game presents you with it feels awesome. If you know other people who play, definitely try to get a gold world pass from them and start on the same server as them, but also don't sweat too much about being on a high-pop server like Asura (I currently play on Bahamut, btw). So long as the server isn't totally dead there will probably be other players you can connect with. Even if XI is something you don't want to get into now and you're afraid it'll go away at some point, you can probably put those worries to rest as the game is currently pure profit to square-enix at this point in it's life (20 years old at the time of writing this!) and the servers are dirt cheap, albeit a little wonky due to a dependency on PS2 devkits, to run, so as far as we know, they have no plans to end online service at this point.