PVP is not the same as IN:X or XUO. I don't PVP so I'll leave an explanation of that to someone else.
The skill gain is harder than on IN:X, especially for craft skills.
Combats and PVP skills are about the same difficulty, if you just macro them. *BUT* there are other ways to raise your skills without macroing.
We have events that give Imagine Nickels as a currency. You get these from PVP events, world events, quests, and various monster bashes, death by dice, etc.
You can also get nickels through donating if you want to help out with the shard's hosting fees. (10 nickels per dollar)
You can use these to buy skill books. (I think 10 nickels = 10 points in a skill) You can buy up nearly all the combat skills this way.
You can also gain all the combat skills except archery through the quests in the Mercenary camp. They used to only go up to 75, but now they will let you go up to 100.0.
>Magery, Macing, Swords, Tactics, Wrestling, Fencing, Resist Spells.
You can also buy "practice weapons" in the mercenary camp to get your skills up faster. They're weapons that I've tweaked to attack very fast -- think dagger speeds -- but they don't hit very hard.
I think if you just wanted to get into PVP, the skill-gain for pvp stuff is easier than on IN:X because of the new additions.