More Wiki goodness -- the information is there, it's just not easy for someone not familiar with the game to put it together.
The server merges seem to be creeping closer even if there's no firm date as yet - I'd advise waiting until after that upheaval is done with if you decide you *are* going to try the game. Then again, from the experience of having live server-copies temporarily merged with Test (where I mostly play), it's actually been a pretty smooth process so far.
I *would* wait until after Game Update 2 has been pushed to live - it has a gajillion performance & stability improvements, bug fixes, and some mechanics changes. Given the latter, it would be sensible to wait until after that's pushed so you don't learn one system and then, a week later, have to learn an entirely different one. (And again that said... it's just equipment systems, neither was rocket science, so if ya wanna join... join.
) More to the point, perhaps, better stability = much better play experience, and the fixes are quite considerable.