Guild Wars 2

I spent some time last night just doing some event chains in Verdant Brink to unlock Glider Mastery, and have a question about how the meta events and rewards work.

From what I saw, my character (account?) was given a participation % which affected rewards given for progressing through the meta event tiers.

I stuck around for the complete day cycle, and got an end reward based on the tier the map achieved.

During the night cycle though I did some events but also a story mission that was instanced. After finishing the story mission my participation was back to 0%, so I’m not sure if I landed on another map instance or not.

Am I right in thinking that if I leave the map before the end of the cycle or log on to another character then my participation is lost and rewards aren’t given?

Just wanted to know as if that’s the case I’ll only bother with the maps when I know I’ve got an hour or more to play so I can get the end rewards (similar to SW and Dry Top).