While I agree with all Nemesis' cons, his pros must be taken with a grain of salt if you start from scratch.
1. People join mostly for sieges, in the morning hours servers are more or less empty, in the afternoon and in the evenings there are more people, but making group mostly takes considerably more time than half year ago.
Many ingame features that exist are practically obsolete. In the end you will do 3 or 4 same runs and sieges until you drop dead. If it suits you, it's ok. Join some friendly legion, so you can do agent and tougher runs, otherwise there is a chance you wont get invited, especially not with starting gear.
2. While most of manastones are selectable, you won't get enough of them in one day, let alone slot them, it will take some time to win against rng.
Running around Aspharanta isn't really friendly for starters. Spirit gear is easy to farm for geared people, if you start with basic Kherub gear (I mean only what you get from Kherub quests) and alone even completing some basic quests can be challenging especially if Elyos will kill you in a blink of an eye while farming. Quests in South Aspharanta with harder mobs can be challenging even for a group of players in starting Kherub gear. They are all doable, but it will take you considerably more time with starting gear, so joining others is a way to do it. Some southern quests give you spirit gear pieces as reward, but are random pieces for all classes, so it takes some time to get the right pieces if you want to avoid broker. You can morph them too, but you need some materials.
When he says "some time" understand it as half a year at least, could be years, depends how much you play and how lucky you are. It is possible to make money, but as a starter won't get rich in a week, unless people carry you in Ara where each one gets lots of loot, you can sell. You can also kill mobs in Tempus Fugit to sell rewards. Improved final stigmas are around half a billion, lower level stigmas cost couple of millions each and if you use them to enchant at lower levels, you will see your earnings lower fast. Considering time and effort it takes to enchant stigmas it's probably more economical to buy them, but you need half a billion first.
3. Without GP you have the same restrictions as in all versions.
4. As a starter forget about end game unless you have nice legion and plenty of friends willing to help or a lot of money and/or you play on a single character 24/7.
Practical difference between starters and endgame players is getting bigger almost with each update, if you avoid shop, you will probably feel you are going nowhere for months.
