new to the lore of tyria
Usually when people ask this, I suggest them to read the following links (and click on any links they find interesting):
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Lore
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Timeline
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Lore
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Timeline
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/The_Movement_of_the_World
If you’re going to play GW1, why ruin the story?
When you play GW1, do this order:
Prophecies > Factions > Nightfall > EotN > WiK >HotN >WoC
Certain things in Factions won’t make as much sense if you didn’t play Prophecies first, and similarly with Nightfall.
EotN and the GW:B content are all concerning events which have consequences for GW2.
There’s actually very little in relation between Prophecies and Factions – mainly comments from Mhenlo, Cynn, Devona, Eve, and Aidan which are few.
If you want to learn up on lore before playing through the game, I’d restrict myself to these links:
- http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/History_of_Tyria
- http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/An_Empire_Divided
- http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/History_of_Elona
- http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Stories (the various links there)
- http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/GW:EN_and_Now (after Prophecies but before Eye of the North)
Anything else is likely to give you spoilers – for what GW2 doesn’t already spoil at least. After playing through the main plot, and done all side quests you care to do, I’d go through these links:
- http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Lore
- http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Storyline (the links here; mainly covers the main plot, but does cover some side-plots or adds information that could be missed)
- http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Timeline
- http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Category:History_of_Tyria
- Dialogue of the links of the following:
Again, these will spoil the main plot and even side-plot lore reveals, but once you read through those, you’d have pretty much 90-95% of all GW1 lore read.
Then for GW2 lore (which can spoil GW1 plot):
- http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Timeline
- http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Category:Books
- http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Category:Tales
- http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Living_World_season_1
- http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Living_World_season_2
- http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/The_All
And once you’ve read all the links in those, you’d pretty much know most of the in-game lore. Unfortunately, there’s no summary for the Personal Story up anywhere, so for any that you don’t intend to do in-game, you’d have to read the dialogue of the individual steps (I’d suggest the same for season 1, reading up dialogue of events etc. rather than the summary, but that stuff is currently scattered amongst dozens of location or event articles – only The Lost Shores has compiled dialogue articles).
Stop treating GW2 as a single story. Each Season and expansion should be their own story.