Questions from a potential new player in a month or so

Baseline

I've had my eye on this game for a while, and I have a few questions I didn't see glaringly sticking their answers heads out:

1.) Faction balance: I understand the Illuminati / Templar / Dragon thing, and I understand I'm probably going to some megaserver (or is there just one now); so my question is, how balanced is it? Or should I say, would I be more incentivized to pick the faction less people are playing (I hear this is Dragon)? It seems in most games I've played, picking the outnumbering side results in eventual boredom, and picking the underdogs tends to be more fulfilling, especially when grouping up with some coordinated players.

2.) Healers: I lean toward playing healers in MMO's. How do people roll healers in this game? Do they level pure DPS then switch to a heal spec? Or do they level and play a hybrid heal/dps?

3.) First char + alts: I've noticed a trend in these games, where players make their first char, PvE-focused, level to max, gear it up, and use it to fund their alts, and THEN they make their second char PvP-focused. I like PvP, so will I want to ignore it until I make a second pvp-focused char funded by my first char?

4.) Crafting/economy: Is it worth it? I actually enjoyed crafting in games where it seemed like it was more than wasted clicks, meaning I'd actually make something worthwhile to sell on the market and get a return for my harvesting/trading/grinding efforts. Is crafting worthwhile in this game? Or is it something that has been relegated to the sentiment "why bother, it's way more efficient to just go farm x dungeon" or whatever (like sadly in most games it is)?

5.) Player interaction: Are players at endgame more isolated and just solo-queuing to get things done (solo queue, run x dungeon, get tokens, I can't remember your name 5 minutes later, bye), or are players more incentivized to organize in guilds and on voice comms to get things done?

Po_gg

Putting it in the beginning, TSW is a pve-focused game. There are several kinda pvp activities, devoted pvp players, but pvp is just a side-fun next to the pve. With that in mind:

1: there's a single server for almost everything, even for some parts of the pvp ("battlegrounds" and the fight clubs). For the persistent world pvp (and only for that) is it matter, which Dimension (server) you choose. Each has its own balance, if you're interested in pvp it's advised to roll on a few, ask around, or check the forum of them to see, how are the faction standings on each Dimensions, and make your selection based on that. (*)

Since for everything else there's only one server, you can roll one character for each faction, every one of them on a different Dimension (where the selected faction is the strongest, for example ) and then sending items, money, etc. between them, because it's single server.

2: there are no classes, healer simply mean you grab some healing weapons and slotting some healing skills onto your bar. When you want to switch for damage, just simply switch the abilities for dps ones, for example. (can do it any time, when not in-combat)

3: since no classes, and you can do anything with one character, alts in TSW are mostly just for cosmetics. You have 3 character slots, because most of the times people just roll one character in each faction, for the faction-specific outfits.

4: crafting... it's not like in other games, it's mostly just assembling. Everyone, right out of the tutorial can craft anything, there are no ctafting levels, tiers, etc. If you have the mats, you can craft an endgame gear right at the start. So on one hand it's not the system for "get a return for my harvesting/trading/grinding efforts". On the other hand it's very useful, folks crafting their glyphs and consumables all the time. Also it's useful to upgrade or change your gear. But everyone does it for himself / herself, TSW is not the game for "I'll make a name for myself as a crafter"

5: endgame is mostly the usual gear grind in dungeons (can't say much about it, I tend to avoid that part ) Sometimes it's for PUGs, but mostly a guild effort. LFG tool is there but it's more efficient to use the chat / cabal chat for gathering a group. (Cabal = guild in TSW)

 

(*) edit: easier this way https://forums.thesecretworld.com/showthread.php?39889-FAQ-Dimensions-amp-Single-Server-technology-Understanding-and-using-them