Newbie

Planning to start GW in the next week or so so I can learn the lore and back story behind GW2 (better late than never right?).

Anyway, figured while I was running I might try for some of the basic HoM things, but I don't really want to do the campaigns out of order. So my question is, if I finish the proph/factions/nightfall campaigns before opening my HoM, will I need to get the statues/armors/quests all all over again for them to count, or will they be added in a retroactive fashion?

There is no such thing as 'opening your HoM'. It's just a trophy cabinet - all it is is a place for you to put your achievements in. It doesn't matter when you get there.

You'll have to go in and hang your tapestries, so you can access your achievements, but it should have a record of any achievements you've acquired (like finishing FoW).

Excellent, means I can do things in the correct order so they make sense. Danke for the help

If you intend to do only 1 campaign at a time, I suggest you begin with Prophecies.

You can visit EoTN once you are level 10 without actually beginning the EoTN story line per se.

To be honest you can essentially do all campaigns at once or one at a time it makes no difference, but I feel beginning with prophecies is the most logical thing for a plethora of reasons.

If I were you however, I would visit EoTN and Kamadan in NF as soon as you reach level 10, since this will grant you access to heroes which will make progress in Proph much easier (and you can do this this without really starting the other campaigns).

I am sure you will enjoy GW and I wish you lots of luck on your journey.

As to the order of campaigns:

-Prophecies and Factions happen at about the same time, though Prophecies is the earlier one (presearing)
(lore wise, you could switch freely here)

-Nightfall definitely follows both of the above

-EotN comes after Nightfall

-War in Kryta follows EotN

-Winds of Change follows War in Kryta

To add to Iuris' above post, here is the timeline for GW. It contains spoilers though, so don't read it if you don't want to.

If you're not intent on doing them in order, I suggest you start with nightfall as you'll get heroes (http://www.guildwiki.org/Heroes) directly from the start. Heroes are only available in NF and EotN, though you can use heroes in every campaign.

Why would you want heroes you say? Because you can customise your teambuild so it's actually good, which you can't do with henchmen as they have set builds. Other players are ideal to play with, but they are few and far inbetween - especially for non endgame content (except for the zaishen daily quests).

That's a matter of opinion.
Unless you get a really coordinated team, you can suffer "too many cooks in the kitchen." Heroes don't have their own wacky agendas -- they obediently follow along and don't whine about their way being better.