I'll second what Rezz is saying, massive world indeed. That and there wasn't exactly a lot of information out there about where to go when leveling. I'll never forget when we were exploring around some islands, I think one of us had a lev so we were just running around and came across a nice little island of giants that we charm killed for a while. Super dangerous as I had no idea how my charm worked and they hit like a truck. Shortly afterwards one of our groupmates found a hole on one of the nearby islands that lead to a dungeon that I swear I could not find any information for online. Obviously it was tested, but it was quite the experience constantly discovering new content that you and your crew had to figure out on your own. About a day afterwards our rival guild Voodoo (this was PvP) discovered the dungeon as well, this was maybe 2 weeks into release so the PvP damage wasn't exactly balanced, so we all hid in a corner except our sorc who stood out in the open to bait them. This place had super tight corridors possibly unbeknownst to our rival group and our Sorc blasted them with a PB AE, killing them all within seconds. Suddenly war broke out for this little hole in this world of pixels. I still have quite a few images I saved from those days. I was a massive shithead and made it a part of my day to ruin others.
I am sure some of my upper guildmates would recall some excellent stories to share. Warhound, Teko (Sinnes), Archiba, Keyoto.
I spent about 2 years recruiting for my guild, Raze, taking off where Tyen left off after abandoning his guild he was going to lead. We had maybe 70-75 members come release, it was quite a punch in the gut to have less than 25 members 3 weeks into the game. There were a couple days where we spent hours just trying keep the game from glitching/disbanding our group when someone zoned or did certain actions. Definitely some good times, however very short lived.