You can be a pure craftsman and merchant, or you can be any kind of fighter, spy or even a smuggler. Different crafting skills, trading skills and tools allow you to create own weapons, armor and items, which can be traded to other players. A nice quest engine gives you the possibility to level up without killing things. There are all kinds of quests, like solving riddles, assassination, escorting etc. There are quests for single persons, or quests for teams.
Nobody is forced into pvp.
Only in certain zones pvp is possible. However, nobody will hunt you down to loot you, because there will not be much to loot. However, items and experience points you collected after your last scan may be lost. During my 3 weeks of playing I still haven't seen most of my starting city, and I didn't get further than to the suburbs and the surrounding wilderness. The graphics of landscape and cities are great.