Make sure I understand this correctly

If you create a roleplaying character you can level up in the starting area until you go to the academy and then you basically doing grouped pvp missions?

hmm
in the academy you do just team missions (if u restart ur pc u will do it with a kind of bot)
i heard that there is a way out i hope that is true ^^
well if i were u i would first finish up all quests in ascalon and find all 5 cities b4 u go there =)
(i went there with lvl 5 and it was horrible xD)

PS: and i'm still stucked in ^^

When you enter the Academy, you just finish the 'tutorial' area, there is tons more PvE content after that.

there are 25 missions (non pvp) to start
there are 60-70 explorable areas (non pvp, not small) to start with additional content to be added by streaming in

fron GW

Guild Wars, in contrast, is based around your skill as a player. Our maximum level is twenty and you hit that very quickly, after about 20-30 hours of play. ,We call that 'The Point of Ascension'. Almost all of the content in the game and in the future Chapters is only available to Ascended characters, which means we don't have to worry about providing different levels of content. All the good stuff will be available to everyone. It's not our intent to force people onto the levelling up treadmill, so the level cap in Guild Wars is almost meaningless.