As to your social apocalypse issue, I'm thinking maybe your server is just in a lull or you were playing during off-peak hours. This problem should be rectified with the upcoming server mergers I think.

As far as doing things for lvl 25-30 ish, well you can't do jobs so I'd either ask one of your LS friends for a PL, use the new party search features to find XP groups, or solo leves (I know you may not like em but they are damn good solo XP) or better yet solo some leves while you seek party. Killing regular monsters a few levels above you solo is decent XP as well but I'd take leves over that tbh.

Job quests consist of some solo and some party play. When you get high enough to do them you will see as you explore the questlines.

As for 2.0 I don't think the game will feel the same as it does now. Similar perhaps, but keep in mind we still have 1.22 and 1.23 before 2.0 hits. With the launch of 2.0, SE surely has something planned as a sort of "1.24" patch to add to the transfer to new 2.0 servers.

Hope that helps.