New player-some questions

[Sagittarian]

1. I notice that the official forum posting restrictions are incredibly severe. I like to be pretty active on the forums of an MMO I play, so I was wondering if there are any UN official forums that players have gone to instead.

There is a facebook group, xivpads.com, and some free companies will have their own web pages.

2. A friend has this game, he got it a bit before me. He's now lvl 10 and counting, and i'm still on lvl 2. Is there a way we can team up for quests without him power-levelling me, and without me being useless or him being overpowered on our respective quests?

The only areas where you can even out is during FATE events (which require a level sync if you are more than 5 levels above the FATE level) and dungeons (which all have a max level characters will be synced to).

3. I note that I have a 20-second sprint power. Can I expect any faster travel speed in future? Mounts, perhaps?

Faster, no. You do get mounts but they are the same speed as sprinting. They stick around until you dismount though, so overall they are faster than trying to run between places.
You will also get the ability to teleport between the large aetheryte crystals when you find your second one.

4. Can someone give me a basic rundown of the classes or whatever they are? The descriptions in the character generation aren't very good. I played City of Heroes for 8 years, and I played WoW long enough to get a rough idea of that game's classes, so if you couch it in those terms I would understand what I'm doing better. I like to play support classes mostly, and buff/debuffers more than outright healers if possible. I also like pet control classes and ranged weapons, but I'm not a huge fan of magic.

http://ffxiv.consolegameswiki.com/wiki/Classes
http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Final_Fantasy_XIV
The pet class is Arcanist (dps) which turns into Scholar (heal) and Summoner (dps). They are all magic though. I think Scholar has more buffs than White Mage though, which is the other healing job.
The only real support job is Bard which starts as Archer (dps).

5. How does loot degradation work? I generally cant be arsed with faffing about fixing things, I'd rather have fun, but i think that I'm going to have to do a bit of boring makework in FFXIV:ARR.

There are menders in every sanctuary/city who will repair everything you have equipped all at once.

6. Is there a shorter acronym accepted by the community than FFXIV:ARR?

FFXIV, ARR, or just AWESOMESAUCE!

7. Are there factions?

No. Which is to say there are not groups which fight each other. The only pvp right now is in the Wolves Den which you enter with a party.
There are 3 different grand companies but they work together.

8. Is it really impossible to skip the intro cinematic video in space and on the cart with the moogles stealing wine etc? The first time was ok, but the second time I was trying to iron a shirt whilst getting an alt to the starting position, and I realised that its incredibly annoying. Not only couldn't I skip, I couldn't even just let it run whilst i did my ironing, as I kept on having to hit a button to advance the conversation with the tramp on the bus.

I haven't managed to skip it yet and I have 6 characters. :/

9. I didn't actually ask this but how do you get posts with more than 1000 characters?

The 1000 character limit does not get applied if you edit your post. So write it, copy/cut, put in a placeholder to post, then immediately edit.