Class choice

Well depends on what you want to do. Early on, clerics are very in demand, probably the second easiest class to get to level 100 with just because its so easy to find a squad for anything when you're a cleric. But if you want to farm instances for money and gear, you'd be much better off making a sin or bm. If you're going to want to participate in territory war at some point (80v80 fight between two factions) then a barbarian is the clear choice to make, there the most in demand class for tw. If you want to be good in open pvp, but not TW, then a sin is a good choice. If you want to be useful all around id say make an archer. I have one, theyre useful in just about every instance this game has, good in pvp, and a great DD class in TW. They really hurt!

I agree that archer is a wonderful/powerful/useful class to play, especially end-game. For beginners, I would however suggest either a cleric (if you want to find squads easily and see how this game works) or something easy to play (if you want to solo your first 60 or so levels) like Venomancer. Seeker is also good and highly wanted early on and end-game.