First off, welcome to NoScrubs.
1) You don't have to pay for items. All of the Cash Items from Retail GPotato Can be bought with Tears.
Tears are collected in 3 ways. Being online, Voting, and donating. *edited* i should add that there ARE items that can be bought with Cash Items called Moolah. You can either buy (donate) at 1:1, or see if anyone is selling any in game, when you have enough money to do so. Some people accept gold, some accept tears. It all depends. The NPC thats sells cash items is Scrub Lord Sedy, and Lady Galadriel sells special costumes. They are both in Terminus.
2) The server is active. It does have its ups and downs. There are extra PVP maps that arent PVP in retail such as Nights Forest, Twilight Quarry, Corrupt Valley, Nightfall Shelter, and Colossus Snowfields.
3) Failsafe means that you have to enter a 4 digit pin before you can access your inventory. This can be turned on/off in the options menu, if you dont like having to enter it. You only have to enter it once, usually when you first log on. After that you don't have to keep entering it all the time. Its basically a way to keep the hackers out of your inventory if your account ever got hacked.
4) The Admins and GMs are very active. We have all sorts of events to spice things up and keep things interesting. Such as spawn events, or find the gm.
5) There is an absolutely NO hacking tolerance here. Anyone who is caught hacking or cheating will receive a permanant ban. We like to keep everyone in the community happy and hack free. And Spambot free. That was a major issue in retail.
If you need to check the rules, there is a section called rules. I will also be stickying something soon to the General Topic Section because I don't think that alot of people actually read the rules.
If you have any more questions, please feel free to add me to your friends list and send me a message any time. Or add me in game if you ever see me. I am around every now and then. IGN: KamiAkai
Hannah