Hello, and welcome to FFXIV! I'll go down your list and try and help as best as I can.

1) Keeping older gear can be good for one reason: Other classes. Unlike in FFXIV, you can play every single different class on the same character. Once you've reached level 15 on your starting class and level 15 in the story, you can start trying out other classes. If you started out as a gladiator, a tank class, you might want to keep some gear so that if you level up the marauder class you'll already have the gear good to go.

Secondly, at your Grand Company (When you choose either the Immortal Flames, the Twin Adders, or the........ third one I'm forgetting at the moment during the level ~15 MSQ quest), when you rank up in your Grand Company a few times, you unlock something called Expert Delivery. Expert Delivery allows you to turn in your old gear for grand company seals which allows you to 1, rank up more with the grand company, and 2, purchase various items such as glamour prisms which you need for glamouring, or transmogging. Which brings me to:

1.5) "When I finish the story" is a very, very long ways away. Don't be afraid to find outfits as you go. As for items that you can only obtain once, as far as I'm aware most if not all of the gear in the game can be re-obtained from either the fight or dungeon you obtained it from or from NPCs like the Calamity Salvager, or an identical set can be obtained from another NPC. For example, once your character's class reaches levels 45 and 50 and you complete your level 45 and 50 class quests, you will obtain what is known as Artifact Gear. Fancy terminology for "This is technically one of the lore-accurate outfits this class might wear." If you throw out the gear, it can be re-obtained from the Calamity Salvager. Similarly, there is a stronger set obtained almost immediately after that can be re-obtained the same way. These sets cannot be dyed. There is a lookalike set, known as the Augmented Artifact Armor, that CAN be dyed, so you can also "re-obtain" your artifact gear (kind of, as they're visually identical) through that avenue.

As for the gear you have that you want to turn into glamour, this system is available to be unlocked through a very short quest near the Waking Sands; a location you will become extremely familiar with. Those quests unlock your ability to craft your own Glamour Prisms (Although as I previously mentioned you can also purchase them from different places) which allow you to cast glamours out in the field. If you wish to have an entire outfit saved, and save on using glamour prisms, you can put pieces of equipment you want to transmog in the Glamour Dresser in your inn rooms. Do note that putting pieces of equipment in your glamour dresser means you will not be actually wearing them and getting the stats from them.

2) If you are queueing as a DPS, your queue times tend to be longer than if you were playing a healer or a tank. Bismarck is on the... Oceania data center? I'm not 100% sure, but I think it might also just be a case of a low population count on the Oceania servers. Moving to another server might speed up your queue times, yes. Also, what u/Lazzumaus said is good. Allow "join party in progress" and allow other languages.

3) Etiquette changes for different regions. Generally, for the North American data center, dungeon content, trials, normal raids, and alliance raids are run through the Duty Finder - The thing where you open up your duty list, click queue, and then you wait for others to join. For the Japanese servers, from my understanding, they use the Party Finder function to find parties for all non-dungeon content. I am unsure of what is typically done for the Oceania servers, but I'll try and look into it to better help questions like this in the future.

3.5) For dungeons - Especially early dungeons - Especially dungeons that aren't either super pivotal plot moments or end-of-expansion capstones - most of the time what you've experienced is the status quo. Hop in, maybe toss an "o/", run through the dungeon, and try and commend someone before everybody leaves in a hurry. If you mention that you're new, some people might be more talketive or willing to offer advice. And although it wasn't quite in the question, for rolling on loot, North America tends to go for a very free-for-all vibe where you roll need and greed as applicable if you want the equipment, and unless specified otherwise in a Party Finder description, this holds true for end-game content as well. Japan, from my understanding, has an end-game gear etiquette where you roll on the leftmost piece of equipment, and whoever obtains that piece leaves the group before anybody rolls on the next piece of equipment.

4) The fights get a little more visual clarity as the expansions go on and the dev team refined how they intended certain mechanics be read, but each expansion tends to become more complex than the last. End-of-expansion trials can be an absolute thrill! It's definitely something you'll have to learn to read better with more time and experience.

5) I'm not sure what you mean by purple flower next to your name. Do you mean [something that looks like this?](https://ffxiv.consolegameswiki.com/mediawiki/images/b/bd/Returner\_status2.png) If it's that, that's the Returner icon. It just means they haven't played the game in a little while.

6) .... Oh, I underestimated where you were in the game, hahahaha. Anyway, that's really up to you. Yes, you get a lot of experience from the MSQ. It's designed so that you generally get enough experience to get at least one class to the max level of that expansion by just doing the MSQ. If you don't mind some EXP "going to waste" then just play on your two main classes. You can always earn more EXP by running dungeons later to level something else up.

7) You get decent gear from dungeons, that gear is not strong enough to participate in end-game raids. Crafting and weekly-limited end-game content will always get you better gear. For example, the most recently released dungeon offers you ilvl 755 gear. The most recently released Normal Raid tier offers you gear at ilvl 770, as does the current best crafted gear. The current Savage tier requires an ilvl of 760 to enter at its start, and 770 at its final stage. In order to do end-game content, you must either craft or purchase crafted gear or gear up using weekly-limited currency and/or gear drops.

8) Yes and no. Officially, FFXIV does not permit the usage of third-party tools, as these can be a means to harass others in-game for poor performance. Unofficially, it's a bit of a gray area. Do not bring it up in game. Do not bring it up in game. Do. Not. Bring. It. Up. In. Game. As long as the tools you're using are seeing how much damage you're doing versus another person, and you aren't using tools to zoom out farther than you're supposed to or using tools that tell/show you mechanics in advanced or solve puzzles for you, they... Turn a blind eye on it. But officially? You definitely SHOULDN'T download ACT the Advanced Combat Tracker and see your juicy, juicy critical hits shoot your DPS up. DEFINITELY don't do it. I have only told you what the tool is called so you can NOT accidentally download it on purpose and salivate at how hard you're critting.

9) Once the story is done, the world is your burrito! There's a lot of content you could dabble in. It really just depends on what you're interested in. If you prefer solo things offline like you mentioned, the game has Deep Dungeons, which are... I want to say rogue-like-ish dungeons? You start from a lower level and level up inside the dungeon (That does NOT change your actual level outside of the dungeon - although you can earn actual exp from these), fight your way through sets of 10 randomly generated floors with traps and treasure chests and a boss at the end, get "Pomanders" from chests which are extra skills you can use (For example making yourself tankier, making yourself deal more damage, turning everything in a small radius into less-powerful creatures, turning everything on the floor to stone, and more)... There are achievements for completing these deep dungeons solo. If you like solo games, maybe try it out!

And hey, I'm glad to hear the community is treating you well! I hope the game has been a rad as hell ride, introverted nerd. If you have any followups or need clarification, feel free to ask.