Question about story between campaigns

This is my first post. I've read the rules and searched the stickies in this forum, but I think my question is pretty much something most people don't seem to care about.

I've recently returned to Guild Wars, and I hadn't spent all that much time with it in the past. I own all 3 campaigns, and I've come back to the game primarily for two reasons:

1. I want to complete my Hall of Monuments achievements in preparation for GW2.
2. I want to actually learn the lore, particularly of Prophecies, so that I understand everything story-related in GW2.

Now, in all honesty, my primary concern by a long shot is definitely completing my Hall of Monuments. But I am curious, will I be missing out on anything, story-wise, by taking a Factions character to Prophecies, as opposed to starting in Prophecies? I'm currently using a Ritualist/Ranger (R secondary for the pets for HoM) and I love how fast and easy it is, so I can focus more on getting my HoM stuff. I recently did the quest to get to Kryta, and I realize I'm in Lion's Arch. I noticed that they skipped pre-searing entirely, which is good because pre is pretty boring I think, but I'm wondering how much of the story I am missing by doing it this way? Is it worth making a new character just to get to Lion's Arch and fill in the gaps, or is there really not much story that's important between that point and Lion's Arch?

Thanks in advance. Again, I'm mostly concerned about the HoM, but if I'm missing a lot of key story elements by starting Prophecies with a Factions character, it might be worth going to a Prophecies character.

You can travel back to Ascalon and do the missions to fill in the gap. You'll need to do this anyway for your protector title. Story-wise you can read up on it on the wiki, or even hang around our lore forum here on guru.

The missions themselves should fill in the gaps though. :) The same would be true if you took your Ritualist to Nightfall. You could do the beginning missions to fill in the gaps.

All you're missing is the fight against the Charr and the exodus that takes you to Kryta. Most of what is relevant about Ascalon in GW2, really, happens well after the War in Kryta (beyond knowing that it was the original Charr homeland 'til the Humans pushed them north, then the Charr regained most of it).

as Sierraa said, just go back through to Ascalon and grab all the mission outposts, then you can do the missions anyways (Story isn't really developed much outside of the missions)

You will however miss what happend before the Searing, since that is only available to Tyria-born characters.

If you want to get a deeper feel of the lore you should certainly try just once playing a char from start of prophecies to Lion's Arch (then you can always continue from Lion's Arch with your old character)
Playing the beginning of Prophecies will show you a lot about the history of Ascalon and the background for the war between humans and charr. This war will still be going on in GW2 and you will be able to visit several of the old locations and see how they changed.

I dont understand why people are so much into lore and i often feel sorry for anet who at times have to setup lore.You have to take into account that gw2 is about 250yrs in the future and again i feel sorry for anet as everyone who is into lore wants to know what happened in those 250 yrs.I always think - im here to play a game i enjoy rather than get a history lesson instead of playing but thats just me.

You do meet some characters later on who were originally met in the prohesies start area, notably Gwen who lost everything family friends home to the charr.

Its esier to understand their story if you too have been there.

Why not at some point start a prophesies character just to do the start area you can go for legendary defender of ascalon to add to your HOM.

Spiritz
For myself I am into the Lore because I am a role player and have been for over 40 years so its pretty hard to stop.
I will make up for myself what happened to my family in the missing 250 years but I will devour avidly anything in both games about lore so I can play the character better.

It is really up to everybody how they like to play. If you want to see beautiful landscapes, do epic battles and kill stuff you can skip large parts of GW1 and still have lots of fun.

Othere people, among them myself love lore. And from what I read on GW2 there are lore goodies for those who love it. I read somewhere that the ascalon landscape will be there in GW2, recogniseable and yet transformed during these 250 years.

You can choose to go there and see the place where your ancestor met Gwen 250 years ago or you can just enjoy what monsters, dynamic events etc that are in the area.

Noone forces either approach onto you.

It's because the storyline is the primary focus of GW1 (being, really, a single-player computer RPG with co-op) for most players who don't PvP. Or at least it was before they added the grinds because of people not into PvP whining about having nothing to do after they finished the storylines.

I'm one of the players that actually likes the lore, I bought GW a bit over 1 year ago for the HoM but I read a lot about the lore before I started and I payed attention to the dialogues and quest texts.

BTW there are a few wiki articles telling what happened in that 250 years gap.

Now more towards the OP, a non prophecies character technically would miss the searing, the charr invasion and Rurik's death, but all that can be seeing if you go back with your char and do the missions as the others mentioned.

If you are only looking to learn the GW lore focusing in the GW2, then you shouldn't worry since only EotN was produced thinking about GW2, so there gonna have the important stuff lorewise.

Great - in 250 yrs time in gw2 i`ll be mentioned as part of the lore - the person the lore ppl hunted down - jk folks.

I had a mini nerdgasm reading that. I'm less of a lore junkie than a landscape junkie. What hooked me to this game was the scenery (one of my first comments to my friend while in Pre was "Look! The leaves are falling from the trees!"), and I took great joy in going back to Pre for my LDoA and spotting recognizable landmarks from Old Ascalon. The environments in GW2 already look impressive enough, but knowing that I'll be able to do some amateur archeological study thrills me.

I realize it's a bit late for an old game, and maybe nobody cares, but I cringed that you didn't spoiler that.

Anyway, yeah, the OP can run back and do the missions, but the side quests, which fill in the minutia of the lore, won't be available. I personally think it's worth having a Prophecies character in the stable to poke around in the areas ahead of LA just to get the full immersive effect.