Your character looks awesome (answering your third question first). We are ridiculously rare, especially with dark skin tones, though I felt it got slightly better after Heavensward was filled with elezen (before then it often felt as though I was the only elezen on my server at all, let alone duskwight). Duskwight NPCs are just as scarce. It's sad.

Alts are very time consuming compared to WoW and unless you RP a lot it's probably not that worthwhile.

With levelling, whatever you enjoy most works best. POTD is exciting for those of us burned out in levequests, fates and dungeons but you might prefer to mix things up. You should be swimming in gear just by catching up with all of the dungeons and trials you're unlocking so I wouldn't go too crazy worrying about that. 2.0->3.0 was very generous about easing people with not-so-great gear into the new content and you have plenty of time to catch up.