Well, welcome (back) to AoC.
hope i can give u a little impression to ur actual questions
- All Tanksclasses, Barb, Sin, Bearshaman und Herold of Xotli are are melees, u can play ranger also as a meleeclass but there would be more disadvantages then playing with (cross-) bow!
- Servers Crom (PvE) or Fury (PvP) - My personal idea of having more Game content on a PvP-Server (Because you could do PvE, openworld-pvp and minis and on a PvE-Server you miss openworldpvp) does not correspond to reality. Crom-PvE is most populated. Fury Community is like a bad joke even the chatconversations on Fury are more worse than population is. So sadly i have to say crom would be the better server if you want to have more content or better to say: more opportunities to use content, because i never see someone doing raids on Fury and PvE groups are rare and soo bad to do with unexperienced and no-class-knowledged people. Minis on Fury you always play against the same 20-30 guys. Some people would say there are more cheaters on Fury than on crom, i cant confirm with that because i dont do as much minigames as a regular pvper does. My opinion there are cheaters everywhere in every game so...deal with it. report them or dont play online games.
- guilds...hm...cant give an advise because i dont know where u come from, what gametimes u have etc so you will 100% have a look on your own. Crom are more than enough guilds but rare of good guilds with rly good players. most are regular players.
- population dont know. comparing both servers, Crom vs. Fury, its like China vs. Belgium.
and yes AoC isnt on toplist of funcom. surprisingly Funcom did something this week for AOCs 9th birthday!!! Independingly of that what they give us to the 9th birthday the most of community didnt expect something from them. Its a very good game ... but funcom ... Sadly i can't find any fun on their behaviour towards AoC-members. Only good thing is their ingame-support and....end of story.