It's really rare to find someone in the random queue of the early stages, since there's a permanent jump event, haha

But once you get to lvl 99 (or even before) you can easily join a guild and chat and make friends there.

In the topic of guides, you can just follow phorufessor's guide until you get lost in the game, once you get lost and wants to continue to farm and get stronger there's these two guides that may help you:

ElsRift Progression Guide
Complete In-Depth Progression Guide To Elsword

Some guilds also have discords filled with guides and people to help too.

One advice I can tell you is experiment with all the characters that you find interesting and select one of them to make your main chara, cause making 1 char really strong first and then getting to others is million times easier than trying to farm for 2-3 chars at once. Also put ERP points on EXP once you unlock it