New to R99 and wondering about effectiveness

[Morcant]

I want to give R99 a chance but I realized my pvp knowledge in this game is rather limited. I only very briefly played on one of the teams server back in the day right when it opened up and I had a group of friends that all copped out after a week or two and went back the their existing characters.

I have read that resists are all wonky here and am trying to figure out what class to give this a go with. I have always loved shadowknights -- my first toon in 1999 was in fact a SK. But are they even remotely worthwhile on a PVP server that seems to have limited grouping chances? Does darkness have the same like 5% chance of landing on a player that root and snare appear to have based on the forums? Any input on SK viability at all would be helpful. I can't seem to find much out about them here which may indicate everything I need to know or may just show people don't like them.

I rolled a shaman just to start playing as something and got him to level 8 without seeing a single person and this was with about 120 people online. Is this going to be the case for a long while unless I am hanging out in major leveling zones like MM and Unrest or is there just no one out near Everfrost / Qeynos for the most part?

Sorry for the lame newbie questions and thanks in advance for any and all input.