My best advice. Try it out, ask questions in nation chat, people will answer your questions. And I think everyone will welcome you.
For griefing, zerging, and ganking, its just a thing in mmo, it happens but you can avoid it.
For SOLs, no, remember its pvp so 1st and 2nd rate are for big open world battle or port battle, you will see mostly frigate and 3rd rate sailing around but at home water, you can see some 2nd and 1st rate doing missions but it might backfire (pirate). And 1st rate has only one dura so people are super careful with it.
And in pvp, nothing is useless even a cutter, if you are sailing in smaller ship and dont have much time, you can join any screening fleet so your time is super flexible, you can join anytime you want and leave when you need to.
(Fyi: we won a lot of battle thank to our screening fleets)
Lastly, this is your game, you can play it however you want but be a gentleman, even if you are a pirate people still love you.
1 more, Im playing for the Dutch.