Returned after years - feeling happy but lost!

[Heart Collector.9823]

Hey people!
I am a returning player to the game after many years of absence, and am in need of some help! I had played GW2 at launch with my RL buddy for some hundreds of hours but we quit before the first expansion hit. Since then, I'd logged in a few times but for some reason it never clicked and I would uninstall. This time around, I'm "feeling it" and I intend to play more again, thus I bought the standard collection.

I have a lvl 80 thief with mostly exotic gear and a pair of exotic daggers (IIRC my buddy had crafted some of it for me before he quit), a lvl 71 mesmer and a lvl 49 engineer. I intend to play one of my older characters and level a necro and maybe a warrior on the side.
Thing is... I'm really lost! OK, leveling the necro is straightforward (I don't think I want to boost this character), but I'm not sure what to do with my old characters. Since my thief is the highest level and most decked out of the lot, logic tells me to focus on her. If I remember correctly, I have not finished the personal story but I'm close. I'm thinking though that since fighting Risen all the time is a drudge, I may play the expansion content instead of finishing the vanilla story (hopefully they have less zombies ^_^ ) and get my hands on some mounts... But I really don't know where to start!
As an aside, my interests do not lie with raiding, fractals, PvP etc, I prefer simply running around in the open world, exploring, doing dynamic events and completing storylines. Hopefully I'll be able to get *some* gear upgrades at 80 in the open world!
Thanks in advance all. It feels good to be back!

[Blue D Phoenix.7260]

Don't rush, play for fun. There's no need to complete everything in a week. Go do the personal story, enjoy it. Play diffierent classes/races, you can always goto pvp area where your characters will be automatically made lvl 80 and unlocked all hero traits and elite specs, where you can try out the elite specs. Thief's elite specs are really good, Daredevil for great dodge and blind attack (never played it only seen it), Deadeye is good for sneaky sneaky theif(good for pve), and the new spec Spector, is good support. 

 

So don't get over whelmed, take your time, go slow, have fun. Some people complain unlocking Skyscale was annoying, but to me it was fun cause I seen the mount grow up, which made it feel closer to mount than others. 

[voltaicbore.8012]

1 hour ago, Heart Collector.9823 said:

As an aside, my interests do not lie with raiding, fractals, PvP etc, I prefer simply running around in the open world, exploring, doing dynamic events and completing storylines. Hopefully I'll be able to get *some* gear upgrades at 80 in the open world!

This is pretty much the way to get re-acclimated to the game. Just a caveat: just try to be as aware of a player as possible as you go along. Especially read tooltips. This game clearly presents pretty much all the necessary combat information any reasonably literate player needs to succeed. As for the many other systems like mastery and whatnot, chances are you won't need to care about them until you start doing content where you need to do so. Mercifully, the most essential expansion masteries are always presented front and center in the very first stages of the expansion story missions.

Basically, just keep doing what you want to do. There is nothing you need to do. As it was when you left, GW2 is not the kind of game where you need to do The Right Thing, Right Now. Learn your class, learn the game world, and learn systems as you go.

[Orack.4825]

When I've start again, I just picked a class that sounded fun to me and completing every map and story until S4.
It's was fun and liked HoT story and maps a LOT. PoF & S4 bring me to mount and it's very fun and convenient.
Then before S5 I fall in love with warrior, core warrior didn't like spe dunno why and I'm doing it again and still having fun.

But tbh once I've done that again and S5 I'll probably asking myself what to do again xD
Their is many achievement to do, so I'll just pick some and fix my own goal (I enjoy meta event a lot too).

So, that my advice, don't try to understand everything directly, just dive in and let the flow guide you ^^

[AliamRationem.5172]

Don't overthink it.  You weren't that far along relative to what the game consists of now.  So, treat it like you're brand new again and do whatever appeals to you.  Want to level a necro?  Do that.  Want to skip ahead?  Why not?

I suppose the one thing to be aware of is that the expansion content is significantly more difficult than the game you remember.  Just keep that in mind if you plan to skip ahead.  If you found the game at all challenging before, you may find the later content frustrating if you just dive right in without reacquainting yourself with the combat first.

[Linken.6345]

This might help OP

 

[Heart Collector.9823]

Thanks for the advice all! I even got a guild invite in game from a friendly person who saw my post. I found how to start the expansion stories so I'll do them on my thief, I'm looking forward to trying out mounts. I'll also level my warrior and necro and eventually buy a character slot or two. I'll just explore and do stuff as it comes up I think :)

[dmone.5631]

Since I didn't see it mentioned here, you may want to invest some gems into the Living World content: Living World - Guild Wars 2 Wiki (GW2W) This is major issue with some folks that return to the game, the content is not part of the expansions. Season 2, 3, 4 and the Icebrood Saga completed packs should cost you around 4,160 gems.  Good Luck and as everyone has stated take it slow and enjoy the game.