If you enjoyed the intro, which is probably the most ancient feeling part of the game (I haven't played it post the changes, but I somehow doubt it's terribly different than it was), you're in for a real treat. 1.0/1.X are fine, but it's the expansions where the game becomes amazing story-wise.
Also, you haven't probably unlocked it yet, but remember that once you can grab other players' characters as NPCs, if they're your friends, level restrictions don't apply. That means that you can be a level 20 character with 3 level 110 NPCs, which trivializes a lot of the combat, but at least allows you quickly go through the story.
I also recommend you read my early posts in the thread, mainly
this and
this (
here is a link to the main page of that wiki, the UI is pretty bad).
When possible, you should definitely focus on doing super useful quests (
here).