You can very easily level to 50 in about 10-12 hours by skipping every side quest except for the last continent and doing them there. If you focus on the main quests until then you'll get the grind done in no time. A day to max level isn't the same as old fashioned months grinding to max level IMO. I agree with the traveling to hand in quests but with the fast travel I didn't feel it as much as you describe since there was almost always a fast travel point in each npc area, bare in mind there is a cost (silver) to fast travel if you don't have the paid perk.
So a lot of discussion comes up around end game. The first thing you do at end game is usually.
0. Finish Vern/Bern questline get ultimate ability and gear to 250 gear score.
1. Chaos Dungeons (250gs entry requirement) you use energy allowing you to run it for currency twice a day, but the first time you do this it'll always get you up to gear score 302 (once you craft upgrades). You CAN run this more than twice for currency crystals which you can trade with a vendor for additional currency, it's obviously slower than the first 2 runs of the day but is something you can do.
2. At 302gs you unlock Guardian Raids. This can run unlimited amounts but you can only "harvest" the guardian soul twice per day similar to Chaos Dungeons. (Guardian Raids are basically Monster Hunter).
3. Cube Dungeon (302gs requirement) to run a Cube Dungeon you need a ticket that can drop from a Chaos Dungeon. You run through a set of trials to get as far as you can with your gs, each level you get through increases the difficulty and the loot you get at the end.
4. Towers 302gs entry requirement. This is a giant tower where you climb the floors. Each time you clear a floor you get the rewards, this isn't repeatable, it's something you will keep coming back to as your gs increases over many many months & years. Rewards permanent stats, books, engravings etc. Once you die (ie: floor 3) once you come back you'll restart at floor 3.
5. Abyssal Dungeons (340gs requirement) these are your standard 4 man party dungeons from any other MMO. This can be run 3 times per week.
6. Once you've done all the above you have your daily & weekly quests just like any other MMO, these reward currency, materials, rep etc. You pick from a selection of quests available with a max of 3 per day/week.
6a. A side thing - join a guild do the guild mission and donate for stones you exchange for more rewards.
7. Once it's released, Raids.
Another thing to mention is that islands are generally catch up mechanics that shouldn't be available but was on beta. This will give you a quick gear boost if it's on release.
You can also click the compass under the mini map and do field bosses, ghost ships, chaos gates and island adventures. These things are usually done if everything above has been completed for the day.
While you're technically right that you're limited on what you can "typically" earn & run per day, it doesn't mean you're locked from progressing further, you can keep grinding but earning much less the more time you keep playing per day, but this isn't efficient or what most Koreans and Russians do.
Alts. Any sweaty player will level alts to repeat all the above I have mentioned doing Chaos Dungeon twice per day, Guardian Raids 2x a day etc. This allows you to gather materials at a faster rate than just playing 1 char and you'll be able to funnel most of these materials back to your main. A recent change coming next week on Korea will only allow you to maximise this method with a maximum of 6 chars.
So my point here is that if you have the time to do everything on 1 char each day, you definitely want to invest in alts, but if you're already doing all of the above on 1 char each day you're already playing a few hours each day! You absolutely don't need to spend money on the cash shop to "keep up" with someone spending hundreds or thousands, generally most income smilegate earns is from cosmetics.
There's competitive PvP tournaments in Korea. The good thing about PvP is that gear is normalised - so no player has an advantage over the other.
Absolutely!
The problem with those end game activities you describe is just how quick they are to complete when you reach the gear score to continue/start them. Chaos dungeons are 5 mins a run, so 10 mins to do both. Guardian raids the same time maybe a bit more depending on group. Cube dungeon, quick as well IF you even get a ticket, which seemed a pretty rare drop to me which can only drop on run 1 or 2 of the chaos dungeon. Don't think you've got the time right for the tower there. There's 2 towers i could see, i completed the easy one after about 5 days of upgrading. During those days i could clear 1-5 floors more with each upgrade round. It was fun but always wanted more. For those wow players, kinda felt like a torghast run where you are forced to stop after each floor and wait for tomorrow to continue. Abyssal dungeons, again 3 a week is pretty disappointing, only managed to get into one group once for these, im guessing due to my gear score. There's so many tiers of these dungeons you wont want to be left behind or else you'll be stuck on your own. The weekly/daily quests the best rewards from these were the 'trinkets' where you end up having to farm loads of those to get the abilities on it that you want. In terms of upgrading gear, the rewards were no where near sufficient to upgrade at a decent pace even when combined with everything else (assuming you've already done the 'upgrade runs' of the chaos dungeons etc)
In terms of fast travel, yep they do help, but it's not like you're teleporting right on top of the NPC you always have to run somewhere else, then back again blah blah and it just became a right chore very quickly. You don't remember having to constantly go into the throne room or wherever the main NPC for that region is and of course you can't use your horse inside, so you have to mindlessly run the same bloody path 30 times. After a loading screen of course. Loading screen to teleport to nearest travel point, run with horse to NPC, probably inside so loading screen to get inside, run through a massive castle, down this corridor, up some stairs, through a massive 200 meter throne room where you finally reach the queen only to find out she wants you to deliver a message to other side of world and return immediately?! And you're doing this constantly! *shudders*
In terms of the side quests etc, maybe thats where i went wrong, but it seems like you should be doing them as you level as they are always around the story line quest and give you rewards such as the upgrade currency and other various useful things.
I can definitely see why there's people saying its an 'alts' game. I felt constantly tethered on progression when playing just 1.
In terms of P2W - hopefully the Beta was different (which i didn't play) but on the russian server, you could buy the upgrade currency for real money which will progress you faster no doubt.
Again, i think there's fun to be had here - i joined the russian server late in the day and was behind the majority, but when starting with everyone else should be pretty good for a while I imagine!