1000 ms from Texas? That's incredibly odd, because I'm over in Idaho and I never get over 100 ms... what the hell server you playing on? Did you pick one of the data centers that's literally IN Japan? Because there are American servers that are literally located in a few places in the US so you don't get any sort of ping like that...
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Only if you decide to make a new character, or don't upgrade your account correctly! I'm not sure what the process is, but SE's account system is so screwy and backwards that there have been a handful of people who bought the game twice by accident when they were trying to upgrade their account from a free trial...so just be careful and make sure you google around and see if you can find a guide or something just to be safe. The SE account system is hands down the game's biggest weakness...it's so confusing.
As you've experience, it's mainly the "major" cutscenes have voice acting. None of the side quests do, and the Hildibrand stuff has some pretty epic silly sound effects going on with the no voice acting thing. It can be a little jarring, going from no voice acting to suddenly fully voiced stuff (or vice-versa) but you get used to it eventually.
A lot of people pick Dragoon or Warrior, those two seem to be pretty fun for new people. The good news is that if you don't like how a class is going (and some of them can take a little while to really pick up steam, like Thaumaturge/Black Mage) then you can just select another one and level that up instead!
Welcome to Eorzea \o/