As new player myself i can get his feelings. This is by far one of the best L2 server i've tried but it's just too old. Game it's totally stale and in the hands of those who managed to overgear themself. Prob something will change when the next massive update will land and A tier stuff will be easier to farm, but as for now the situation it's the following:
Early: You won't have massive problems lvling solo ... You can go for raids but remember that those are farmed by 2 clans that exploit the fact that C/B-OE weap don't miss, due to the penality, on lvl 20-30 char. So you gotta be fast and create a PT before they come.
Mid game ( 50 - 76 ) : If you can't DB you can pretty much just log once a day for the FoM/ABG raids.... Rarely you may find some AOE party and farm a bit, but that's all.
End Game: Still haven't reached that point but i'm pretty sure the situation it's stalled there. I'm ready to bet that top clans pretty much got a total control over Raids ( even the epic ones ) and exp spots. Like it has always been before they instanced every aspect of the game