GW confuses me. :) Help?

Hey everyone. I have just reached level 10 R/Me. I have also just finished Runes of Ascalon. I was just wondering, and don't get me wrong I am having a ton of fun, is there anymore than just running around doing quests and missions with some Henchman? Before I bought the game I did research on the game and lots of people were saying stuff like: "It is a very PvP orientated game." "You never get bored." "Guilds are cool." etc... I haven't met any of those comments yet . I was just wondering what happens now? Do I carry on doing what I have been doing or am I doing something wrong?

Thanks for your time and all of this would really help me .

pve and pvp occur on separate continents (with the exception of low lvl pvp which generally has low activity). you are free to create a pvp character any time you wish from the character creation screen. try it out, i would recommend random arenas to start.

guilds are cool, assuming you get into a good one. to find a good guild, you can try in these forums or one of the major outposts (for prophecies characters try ascalon city, or lions arch when you get there).

The missions and primary quests tell the story with some of the side quests adding flavor or detail, or perhaps entirely unrelated. This will continue until you finish Prophecies.

Other than the little PvP match you played coming out of Pre-Searing (if you participated in it at all), there is no more PvP in Prophecies. You go to the PvP-only arenas for that, if interested. PvE and PvP are for the most part separate and the PvP stuff is optional.

"Never get bored." This is a game and depending on the person, boredom will come at some point.

Are you in a guild? If not, I'd suggest finding one - join ours if interested. Then you have other people around to team with or at the least chat with and ask questions as they come up. Maybe have a forum where you can ask questions without fear of being ridiculed. The right group of people can make a huge difference.

Back to missions/quests. Missions carry you through the game, but the quests in Prophecies give a lot of skills and get you out exploring. For a first time through, I'd recommend taking your time and enjoying it. Additional toons won't be the same since that sense of discovery will be over, for the most part.

I have a ton of characters and a ton of unfinished quests that someday I may get to. You get to a point where they don't matter so much, depending on the rewards. So don't feel like you have to do every single quest before moving on. If you feel under powered for an area, then gaining some levels may help and thus doing quests will speed that up.

Your experience will improve dramatically when you find a good, active guild that you enjoy playing with. Just don't expect to always get someone to play with you for every low-level mission you're doing; the vast majority of players have done all of the low-level stuff as many times as they're ever going to, and only rarely would want to go back to help someone play through them. Once you get to some higher-level content (which, honestly, you'll probably get to by the time your /age says 20 hours; experienced players can reach the cap in 4 hours easily enough) you'll find more people willing to party up.

Oh yeah, for PvP: play through the PvE campaign on at least one character to unlock a good number of skills and items, then roll a PvP character to play PvP on the Battle Islands. It will be a long while until your PvE characters are outfitted for PvP properly (though it can be done), so just use a PvP character until then.

I'll admit that the Prophecies campaign has a slightly longer level grind, but once you get past that the game will really open up for you.

Feel free to add me to your friendlist. If I'm online and not busy, I'd be glad to help you out with anything I can. I like doing the early areas with new people. My in game name is Calista The Moon

There are tons of things to do with Guild Wars! You really need to complete one campaign to maximize your fun (and skills). Prophecies is probably the most long, drawn-out campaign, but still worth completing. Once you've finished, PvP is just one aspect. What else can you do?
-There are always weekend events to participate in. It gives you something else to focus your time on.
-Buy new skills and capture elite skills to make your character better.
-You can work on getting really cool armor and weapons. Upgrade them with runes and insignias to make you stronger. Dye makes them even cooler. Already upgraded yours? Now do you heroes! No heroes in prophecies though
-You can collect things: Mini pets, tonics, pets.
-You can work on titles, filling out quest books, etc. There are tons of side quests to work on.
-Zaishen quests/bounties, Nicholas the Traveler, War in Kyrta quests/bounties. They change all the time so you don't get bored.
-If you need money for the above stuff, you can find a place to farm items to earn gold. Guilds are really good for helping you to find something other than the storyline to work on.
-If you haven't found Wiki, it's a good place to research all of the above.
Have fun!!!