I think you're an experienced player in MMOS, but may I suggest you one thing anyway? Join a guild that is not Mistwalkers, with a semi large and solid playerbase, it will make your experience a lot less frustrating. Tons of non hardcore guilds accept members all the time, have plenty of people online and groups are almost granted. That or accept doing pickups often (which in EQ2 are often pleasant experiences) and don't chain your permanence in game to the others in your guild.
Really, give it a try. There is nothing worse than logging in and finding out that all your buddies are not online, it made me quit wow in 2 weeks even if I was having a lot of fun back then (and pickups in wow made me want to /wrist 3 times x hour at least).
There are plenty of people playing EQ2, find some dedicated ones and enjoy it a lot more.
P.S.: go transfer your chars to high pop servers, it's gonna help
@Kuriin: 1 to 50 is fast, really fast I mean, to the point I'd say faster than wow. Doing quests is kinda important tho (past lvl 10), to get a bunch of AA on the way, even if it's not necessary in the least, you'll still get some by killing nameds etc., but the first 40-50 AA can make your toon a lot more powerful.
50 to 60 it slows down a bit, but if you can spend a few hours per night, one level a session is quite doable. The 60 to 70 tier is, for what I remember, still fast enough to not be a burden.