Couple of questions from absolute newcomer to Everquest

[nyctasha]

First and foremost I'm not sure whether community is more active here or on the project subreddit, so I guess I'll just post it to both and see.

Now to introduce myself, I honestly have no idea why it took me so long to give a try to one of the old-school mmorpgs that I could never eperience during their prime-time. Like many, my mmorpg journey started with world of warcraft back before TBC. Throughout the years I kind of stuck around with various moderrn mmos, but kept missing something there that always led to me losing interest somewhat quickly. Way too little freedom, exploration, way too fast-paced and so on. I grew up on old-school rpgs like Might & Magic, especially VI and VII and love them to bits to this day and none of the mmos brought back the feeling of "wonder" I experienced there. Nowadays I'd rather play EVE for its sandboxiness and open-ended gameplay, all of which I crave for in games. But sometimes I tend to miss a roleplay and fantasy and traditional classes.

So I stumbled upon Project 1999 on reddit and after some reading and researching it hit me "this bears so much resemblance to my old M&M adventures" and so I am here and absolutely loving it so far.
Now onto my questions, I did a fair bit of research and wiki-browsing ahead, knowing Im gonna be utterly lost otherwise. Figured most of the stuff so far, but there are few issues I cant answer myself.
1. question: Chat channels
This I'm completely lost with. Which channels serve to what purpose. I think global channel is disabled on a blue server, right? So how do I talk to people, through /say or ooc? And what is the range at which people see my message, immediate vicinity or local area? Im seeing a fair amount of low level people running around Nektulos Forest, but noone talks so I just tend to /bow before everyone as a greeting which fails if person is a bit further away. It takes a moment to type down and people generally run around like headless chickens [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.] so sub-question is: is there any way to possibly bind emotes to keys?
2. question: is there anything like a bank/storage separate from inventory bags?
I managed to find some info about banking in Freeport, but I'm not sure if it means what it sounds like to me.
3. question, biggest one: Classes
Now this is my biggest issue. I usually go straight for healers/support hybrids. Those are my absolute favourite roles in general as I enjoy being needed and have responsibility of keeping everyone alive and it also tends to raise a difficulty, which I appreciate.
So my first thought was to roll a cleric, possibly druid or shaman. However after a lot of reading, it seems like I could have a problem playing Cleric as my soloing capabilites would seem to be limited and its been mentioned couple times he is also expensive to gear and with my zero Everquest experience Im not sure how much luck will I have with grouping up with people. Im afraid of getting stuck unable to find a group and neither do things myself at some point.
Druid from what I know would be my another immediate go-to class here, but..he is apparently fantastic for leveling and beginners, but considered useless endgame because of being hybrid and jack of all trades? That would be a shame to be near unusable later on.
Shaman seems interesting as-well, supposedly strong, but didnt find all that much useful information about him as a healer.
Another two classes that appealed to me were Necromancer and Enchanter for various reasons: pets/charm, strong ability to do what they need on their own, not completely reliant on availability of others and their supposed supportish roles.
Therefore, for now I rolled a Necro and even though Im enjoying it (seriously, can let my pet sit down or guard and he laughs maniacally when fighting? How awesome is that!), However Im still pretty much in diapers lvl-wise and considering how slow-paced EQ surely is Im very willing to reroll if someone would just push me in a right direction [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.] I know I will miss being party-magnet later on when I get through my newbie phase.

Any class advice gratly appreciated, also any other not so obvious begginer advice.
Id also love to find some active guild that would either consist of beginners like me, so we can explore this waste wondrous world together or just group of people that doesnt mind potentionally milion questions in the near future.