Is doing mission in the main story a must to advance?

** Possible story spoilers **


Just had a few hours of great fun with my now level 7 N/W and three henchmen doing the mission string from the Northern Wall in post-searing Ascalon, to pushing back the charr from Fort Ranik back to the wall - only to die horribly while getting jumped by a few too many charrs just in front of the wall .

I can't say I was too pleased with being bumped back to Fort Ranik and can now look back to hammering away at the exact same rather long route again with all mobs respawned.

I assume this means that in worst case scenario with a few too many screw ups you could potentially end up running the same mission for 8+ hours if your party was wiped out multiple times near the end of the mission?

I am really enjoying GW, but I am curious to know if it's so story driven that you have to go through the main story missions if you want to advance to new areas and move on to Lion's Arch etc., or if it's possible to just waltz around randomly and still progress if you feel like doing that?

And a question with regards to the specific mission that got me killed here. I assume I don't have to try to take out all the charr on the wall, but should just have headed for the Frontier Gate instead that I just noticed on a map?

Open world map and clik on any listed spot and woosh you are there.

That dawned upon me some time around level 1 - but I thought that it might be impossible to get to other areas so they could get flagged unless you did the missions.

You can skip every mission and just walk from town to town.

Here's a nearly full world map if you want spoilers.
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/map/GWMapX3_p1_10.swf

On that mission you are talking about, you need to kill all those Char at the end, and then kill the boss that's just inside the gates. Try to pull only one group of 3 at a time and it's not that bad. It does happen that you get 6 or even 9 at once, then it gets really tough. This is after those Char you kill with the catapult ofcourse.

There are also missions later where you may have to try many, many times before you beat them. Usually if I fail once and think I have a good chance of failing again, I just skip the mission and walk to the next one. This stance came after I failed the same mission like 10 times, and I said to myself "no more of that!"

It's possible to kill most of the Charr at the wall with the second catapult. Lure them out, then run back to the catapult and fire, they will be standing right in the blast zone. After that it's like 3 groups of 3 Charr that are easily split up and the one boss Charr.

It's also entirely possible to kill every last charr there without using either of the 2 catapults.. Takes more time but it was a blast doing it that way..

I remember the very first time I tried that mission in the Mar BWE .. We kept dying off and it took hours.. Now it takes 20-30 minutes to get through. If you have a decently tankinsh warrior and a Ele.. type that can firestorm.. it goes pretty quick.