There have been changes to the lower level areas so you can level right through them fairly quick.

It is also soloable right through to level cap if you wish to, however you will miss some really nice group instances and the like.

the low level areas are fairly sparse atm, however if you join a kin people will be leveling alts (at least until Mirkwood comes out) so you should be able to get people to help you through the content.

The Epic Story line is pretty cool if you are thinking about joining up be warned combat mechanics are getting changed again with Mirkwood so you may have to relearn everything after just a few months.

I purposefully chose this game over WoW cos everyone else plays WoW and I wanted to be different