Progression on a single server feels very natural and fun. XP gain only becomes annoying if you find yourself moving between servers and starting fresh a lot. Then you get to where you're just trying to get enough XP to make such and such that you had before. And even then it's not really tedious, especially with a few friends. You can level up quickly just by building up a base since you all share xp on crafting too. I gained a few levels on an official server just helping some guys build a big wooden house, joined their tribe and all of us together were out deforesting the area and crafting walls and foundations and ceilings and such as we went, then heading back and putting them all in place before going out and gathering more.
Taming also isn't bad if you do it while crafting. I tamed a trike (took about 40 mins I think) while building a house. I just knocked him out in the woods and deforested the area around him as I went, making trips to where I wanted the house planted and back to him as needed. As long as you get them good and sleepy you can leave them for a few minutes to do other stuff.
You can do cool stuff when you get pillars. Placing them is a bit tricky now, but I was able to make a nice cliffside base on the northwestern cliffs - with a ladder to the water and housing up on the top with irrigated farms. Diving down in that area is ridiculously dangerous though, and it's deep - the area is usually patrolled by a dozen or so megalodons. I dove one time when some trikes and stegos and stuff had fell off and were keeping them busy, and I saw a bunch of oil and pearls on the bottom. But I drowned before I even reached bottom, let alone got back up. Would need a tamed megalodon to even have a chance to get down there.