Ranger grouping

[Wiery]

Hello all - I'm an EQ vet that began playing in my late teens at release in 99 on Xegony, in a guild called Imperial Guard. I played a shammy, SK and monk at lvl 60 and raided through velious. I began leveling a lvl 24ish ranger before SoL came out and was really enjoying the class. However, I quite playing altogether, shortly after SoL was released. At that time, I had a large set of friends and he was heavily twinked (RBB, Tolan BP, woodsman, etc), so grouping was never an issue.

Looking back through the threads here (albeit some are older), it appears that finding a group as a ranger may be quite difficult on this server. While soloing is fine, I was really rather hoping to get back to the group dynamic in P99. While I greatly enjoyed cutting edge raiding in the old days, I enjoyed the company of the community even more. My long winded question is to follow. I've always wanted to pick up playing a ranger, but this will be my first toon here, so I have no means to twink and no friend base to build on. Is it likely to still be difficult to find groups?

If the ranger class is frowned upon, I may consider playing a more desired class to cap and gather gear along the way to use with my ranger at a later date. Any thoughts on the matter are welcomed.