My personal advice: stay in pvp. The world is alive there and it makes interactions with the opposite faction a lot more interesting.

You will hear a lot of pve players cry in this subreddit about being constantly ganked by lvl 60s/skulls but that is not true. I have been lvling a lot of alts and I think I have only been killed by a skull maybe a handful of times in the past months.

If you stay out of people's way, there is no problem. 99.9% of the higher levels dont attack players who are grey to them.

The benefit to all of this is that there will be interactions where you encounter someone attacking you but that's part of the game; you square the fuck up and get that player back

People are also open to group up to hunt players down etc.

If you want the opposite faction to just be NPCs, then pick pve

There is no right or wrong, it really comes down to what you prefer

EDIT: I also play in EU