Level 20. What now?

I just hit level 20 for the first time on my Elementalist. I'm fairly clueless on what I should do now, though. What's next?

Play through the campaigns. It's been said many times, but it's so very true. Level 20 is where the game really starts.

What campaigns do you have? Have you been following the missions and doing the storyline?

Continue whatever campaign you are in, then do the other campaigns. Normally you hit level 20 with a character long before the end of a campaign. Then it's time to work on getting elite and non-elite skills to create new builds for yourself and your heroes as you move through the majority of the campaign. Plus, there are dungeons, challenge missions, and elite areas to do. And, when all that is done, you switch to Hard Mode and vanquish or work on Guardian.

Tell us what campaign you are in, where you are in that campaign, and what other campaigns you have, and we can be more specific. GW is just beginning when you hit level 20.

My advice to any (new) player: forget about levels, they mean nothing in Guild Wars. Only playing to level up can be done in other games.

I've only got Prophecies, though I plan to pick up the other three once my job starts in a few weeks. I've done most of the Prophecies co-op missions and am working to complete my skill library. I'm up to Ice Caves of Sorrow on the storyline, and have most of the towns in Prophecies unlocked.

Working through Sorrow's Furnace is fun when you need a break from the story.

If you're at Ice Caves, then you still have several missions to go before the end. Plus there's the Tombs and Sorrow's Furnace to explore, places to map, working on the bonuses for all of the missions (in case there's any you've missed), elite skill captures, and there's always secondary missions to do.

Also rerolling a new char, as they all play very differently, and getting into PvP, but that's really more of a long-term goal.

the game only starts at lvl 20 =D. do all the missions, vanquishing, skill capping, dungeons, cartography, etc etc

Like they all said, lvl 20 is when the game truly begins.

So your at the Ice Caves, you got like 4 or 5 more missions til the end.
Theres Tombs to do, Sorrows Furnace is extremely fun.
Also you can do Underworld or Fissure of Woe eventually.

I'd recommend getting all the games to truly experience the Gw fun

grats on getting to level 20. By now you can basically do everything. You can work on your titles, do jq/ab and get ur luxon or kurzkick titles as well as gettin yourexp in pvp. You can help other players in pvp level up or try and exp some pvp matches.

I thought he meant Ice tooth caves lol. He meant Ices caves of Sorrow. Yeah you have 3-4 Missions left. Yeah you can do Sorrow Furnace, Tomb of Primevil Kings, The "after" End Game quests with the Titans(Glints Quests) given in Droknars Forge. Try out Underworld or Fissure of Woe if you can find a Non-Speed Clear group. And of Course depending on your preference for Title hunting you have a few options as previouly listed.

Also, are you sure you followed the whole storyline (ie, did you do several missions in the Jungle and the Desert) or did you get run? If you got run places, well then you missed out on quite a bit of the storyline and content.

Also, if you just hit lvl 20, you must have tons of skills missing, try to collect them, especially do an elite skill hunt with signets of capture, most of the elite skills are in the later missions and areas, wiki helps.

That's what I really like about Guild Wars...

It's all about the skills you have and how you combine and use them.
Your level is mostly unimportant

Almost every other MMORPG out there is mostly a level grind with quests like:
Kill 10 of such and such
kill 5 of those things
Kill 1 of that other thing
What a ZzzzzZzzzzzz-fest

It generally takes a long time to level in Prophecies because all the quests offer such low EXP points as reward. However in the campaigns that followed leveling is much faster. EXP point rewards for characters born in Factions for example are huge. 1-3k XP per quest.

Aside from the previously mentioned things to do...

There are 2 very important quests.
The reward is 15 attribute points for each quest for a total of 200 available attribute points for your character.
170 for reaching level 20
+ 30 (15 x 2)
= 200

Each campaign has their own versions of these quests for characters born in that respective campaign.

Since you were born in Prophecies your quests are:
1. Forgotten Wisdom (Skyward Reach)
2. The Hero's Challenge (Droknar's Forge)

Congrats on reaching lvl 20.

Go stand on your hands and poop coins.

Are you done attribute quests? http://guildwars.wikia.com/wiki/Attribute_quest
if done, then good, you can look for Zaishen Challenge and Zaishen Elite in The Battle Isles. After then try Random Arenas, who know, maybe you fall in pvp love.