OK so I logged on for the first time in over a year this past weekend. I am so lost that it is frustrating. Can you guys help?
OK so I have a lvl 80 Guardian that has what looks like 3 pieces of exotic gear from running AC. The rest of my gear is rare or fine. Should I continue running AC till I get full exotics from the the Tears I collect, then move onto CoF (or another dungeon)?
From the dungeons do I move onto Fractuals? Is that what Im basically doing for end game (PvE)?
I have never touched PvP before, so when does PvP factor into end game? Or is the choice yours where you pick PvP or PvE? PvP is very confusing to me. There's WvW, Edge of Mists, Structured, Ranked, Non-Ranked, etc. Which one should I be doing?
I just want the best looking gear and to get tomes of knowledge for my alts. Can somebody tell me what I should be doing?
I also auto leveled an alt yesterday to lvl 20, but I dont know what to do with him.
Guild Wars 2 doesn't do the dungeon grind thing for gear tiers. It's purely cosmetic. If you have enough Karma, you can get a full set of "endgame" exotics from the temples in Orr, each Temple has a different stat set. Or you can craft your Exotic armour, or just buy a full set off the AH. Or do WvW until you can buy a full set of Exotics using WvW tokens.
I recommend doing all the dungeons for fun, since they're interesting, and their Story mode has a side-story relevant to the main Personal Story. And the Explore Paths for each dungeon are interesting in their own right, for the mechanics of the fights, sequences, or bosses.
Fractals is additional content to do for fun, and the occasional reward like Fractals skins, or tokens you can use to get Ascended trinkets (you can also use Laurels for getting those, or play WvW).
There is no traditional end-game in GW2, you just do whatever activity sounds fun: dungeon runs, sPVP, World vs World, Fractals, World Bosses, etc. There is nothing you "should" be doing.
sPvP is it's own seperate thing, where your PvE gear isn't used (everyone is normalized). So think of it like a team deathmatch client you load up and play in, either ranked or unranked. Either one will let you progress along "Reward Tracks" for gear, skins, etc (check out the sPvP panel for more info).
World vs World uses your PvE gear, and is a big three-way PvP between three servers, on multiple maps (a "home" map, and a central map). You can invade the home maps of other servers, or duke it out in Eternal Battleground. Edge of the Mists is a kind of WvW "lobby" map you can do stuff in while waiting for your WvW queue to pop.
Tomes of Knowledge can be easily gotten from doing sPvP reward tracks. Best looking gear, well, that's up to your personal preference. Half my gear is level 20 skins over my Ascended items. "Looks" don't really equal "stats" in this game. If you like the look of the Arah dungeon set, you'll have to run the Arah dungeon until you have enough tokens to buy the skins you want, and so on.
Structured PvP doesn't really fit in anywhere: I know people who bought GW2, loaded up into sPvP, and never left it. To them, sPvP is the game they play. I pop into sPvP now and then when I feel the urge for it, and here on GAF a lot of others consider it their primary play. PvE and sPVP, like in Guild Wars 1, are very much their own things, but you *do* benefit from doing either, in the other, since rewards you get in one can be used in the other (like skins, or Tomes, etc).