NA Aion questions

So after playing Darkscape and suddenly the Darkscape Servers shut down, I am now looking for a new MMORPG to satisfy my quench.
Aion has been getting some attention lately from the MMORPG subreddit, so I figured that this would be the best place to ask some questions.
I've checked the requirements and I'm fairly confident my computer can run it, so onto the questions.

1. What is the state of the game, ie population, devs actually care and provide updates, p2w (most ppl say that Aion is mostly cosmetics so I'm not as concerned),
2. What is a quick summary of each class? Oh and is the game hard to learn or easy to pick up? Tera has soo many buttons I don't even know what half of them do. Darkscape on the other hand was pretty much just click.
3. Time it takes to reach endgame (unless the quests are like Runescape, cuz Runescape quests are awesome and full of story that I'd actually take time to read rather than skip the dialogue)
4. I'm more of a PvE and I heard Aion is PvP, do I have to do PvP or can I partially avoid it and just do PvP when I feel like it? (IE in Darkscape, the entire map was PvP within certain level limits, so you had to be careful and not get ganked)
5. I'm in NA, so whats the best beginner friendly server?
6. Major differences between Darkscape and Aion that might deter me from playing?
   tyty