I will give you my honest opinion as i also play for 2 months now.
Atm its a good period to start with the even you can get 105 in 1 day and then you can start trying to find a clan and a CP.
Yes it is auto farming when you fix your macro you can farm without any problem (if you have the gear). And yes you need to spend $$$$ at least to some level so you can farm efficiently alone with a prestige rune that costs 15$. Once you reach that gear (different for each class) you can then say that you don't want to spend more $$ and you can survive with that perfectly fine and be in a community (clan that you like and enjoy the game) but you will never ever compete for anything that requires top gear as those in the top spend a lot of irl money in order to be there. If you are also a big spender then yes you will enjoy pvp, oly, pve anything and everything the game has to offer, if not tho, as most of us are, its better to invest around 500$ and be able to solo farm in areas in order to make adena to upgrade your gear.
Regarding hardcore: I've been playing classic servers for the past 7 years eu and russians those are indeed fun and competitive but being able to finally farm while you are at work and enjoy 4-6 hours game play in the evening with your cp/clan (raids, dungeons etc) its also a qol (quality of life) achievement this game has to offer you.
So its down to what you want to achieve in your game and what you want to get from it. There is definitely fun to find in this game as a lot of people are friendly and will teach you anything you dont know about it.
The choice is yours!!