A similar issue a lot of us had. The Devs took it from Oldbus where the grind was extremely painful and took forever to a new world they’re still refining where the experience matters a little less and thus takes less time to level up. They’re re-introducing some mechanics to make grinding a thing again. Check it out here: New Dev Blog: Raid Beta and Bringing Back the Overworld
Upgrades to your equipment come from shards and raids, which are end-game content, as well as the +1 items from running dungeons.
These you get as you level up in each class, starting at level 5 and finishing off at top level. You select them via your inventory (look for “talents” tab).
Still missing at the moment, but there are discord locations for this, as well as a LFG posting that you can use in general. You can also hit up highsteppe and ask around.
There’s the PvP Battleground queue, which can sometimes take a while to join if there’s limited players online. In addition to that, they’re adding a Trickster Goblin mechanic to bring back some overworld pvp. See the same link as above.
I’d say give it a try next week. Post if you have issues, and the devs will listen and generally try to fix things to make it better.