I've been playing everyday for the last 2.5 months. Very well-made, polished game with a lot of stuff to do. I never had any bugs or crash problems myself, like some reviwers mentioned.
Progressing is very fast and easy for the first week or so, then it gets slower but still you can keep pro... Show more gressing reasonably fast even without spending any money.
The game's balanced at whatever level you are, except for the Arena where you get stuck at a rank pretty quickly if you're low level, but you're not missing out on much just with this.
Of course, if you'd like to catch up to the max level players fast, you can spend a lot and P2W it. However, except for the top 3-5 players in the game who spent a lot, you can still win against anyone around your level if you understand the game mechanics and hero/troop stats, and develop your units carefully.
My tip is to join a highly active and friendly alliance as soon as you can, it makes the game much more fun to play :) There are awesome active alliances even at low and medium levels.
One issue is that the game really needs a meaningful update now. A lot of high level players have not many opportunities to progress anymore and thus they're getting bored and some quit.
As a new player, i'm sure you'd have a lot of fun!