It really depends on the guild/sever you find man, iv'e been playing since BC and have seen the rise and fall of "Raiding Guilds" back when Guilds were server hopping to get the server first raid kill and claiming it across multiple servers. Luckily those days are gone rofl xD.
As Nami said, LFR's and Pugs are not very fun, the pugs fall apart and LFR has a very clever nickname "Looking For Re-" I'm sure you know the rest of it. And dungeons will always be easy since Heirlooms are so easy to obtain. EVERYBODY just 2 shots everything lmao it's quite funny.
BUT, with the cross-server thing, even if your realm has no "decent raid guilds" you can always join a guild on a connected server. I raid with my guild every Tuesday and Thursday. We wipe out normal on Tuesday, and then heroic on Thursday. Weekends are stuff like RBG's and such. We all get on discord and have a fun time, some people are drinking, some are smoking, we all know our stuff BUT we also know how to have fun, which is really nice. So i suggest finding a guild that can clear the bosses but still have fun doing it.
Nothing worse than a tense raid, and awkward too lmao.
Gold can buy game time as well as game services now like race changes and appearance changes.
Of course PVP is always fun though there is not any "PvP Tier Gear", but there is an honor system that you obtain rewards for like mounts, titles, and artifact weapon appearances.