The ques are annoying but the afk shops being limited to 30 mins and the new servers being added have helped i think. I am wondering if the ques will get even shorter once the free 30 days is over.
As soon as you hit 25 you can do a short chain wich lets you enter the abyss. Every mob or player and some quests here gives abyss points wich is what you need for buying gear and some skills after lvl 30. Also abyss points you get are counted towards your legions(if in one) contribution points and so your legions rank on the server. Abyss points are spent like money so you can loose your personal rank if you spend it all.
You can grind mobs and do repeatable quests or kill players for the abyss points depending on what you prefer. Sometimes it is possible to grind without being ganked but the threat is always there. You can keep an eye on minimap for enemies as player enemies show as red squares while hostile npcs show as red dots but it is hard to tell if the enemy player is hard or not as levels show as ?? so he could be below you or 5+ higher and impossible to hit.
Roaming gangs hunting for lone questers are fun when you are part of it and not so fun when you are the lone quester.
Sometimes both sides gather bigger groups but the fights i have been in would just end up as one group hugging a tower with friendly npcs that oneshots your enemies and then you only get a kill now and then if some poor guy got dragged into your group by a templar(aoe skill that kinda works like the one those chaos dudes with funny hands in warhammer have).
There are fortresses and some lesser artifacts to be captured but not many can do this yet as mobs holding it are lvl 40 and most players are just starting to get past 25. There are higher level mobs and fortresses in another part of the abyss for when we get max level.
In the 25-28 range you can do a instance that is supposed to be a training ground for taking fortresses and artifacts. It seemed easy when i did it with legion but i often see people looking for non idiots for doing this. They must have had some weird groups...
I am worried that grinding abyss points will get boring in the long run after hitting lvl 50 even if the gear looks awesome.