Guild Wars 2

I’m a norn, I think. and I just got done with that tournament or whatever against that shirtless guy who must have the thickest skin ever to do being that in the snow. so I did that, I’m level 21 and now I’m running around some place, a hub or something and the quest helper or whatever it is keeps pointing me to areas to explore to get a little bit of experience. and then it points me to another area to explore to get a tiny bit of experience.
so after doing that 20 times, trying to get to these maps in unreachable spots I don’t really know where else to go and I don’t feel like exploring all these spots. is there somewhere else I can go to quest?

Until you can tell us where you are we can’t really be of any help.

hoelbrak. I assumed I described everything decent enough for knowledgeable people

You didn’t mention where you were other than saying it’s a hub, so how could we guess?

So, you’ve gotten to level 21 by just being in Hoelbrak? Or did you do all of the hearts/quests Wayfarer Foothills and then go back to Hoelbrak? If you did, then you can find the Asura Gate to Lion’s Arch (should be marked by a pink swirly circle on the map). Once there, you can go through one of the other gates to get to the other cultural cities, which lead to the starting zones for each of those races (Caledon Forest for Sylvari, Metrica Province for Asura, Queensdale for Human, and Plains of Ashford for Charr). You can do more quests there.

Or you could go from Wayfarer Foothills to Snowden Drifts, the next Norn zone (for levels 15-25).

In houlbrak your questhelper keeps pointing to Wayfairer foothills untill you get 100% map completion (find all PoI’s, Waypoints and vista’s, do all hearts and skillpoints) there.

If you don’t feel like doing so, you can move to a level 15-25 map. there are 4 of them and two of them border Wayfairer foothills, but I name them all, as well as the theme there.

1: diessa plateau. This is charr area and you should have allready been there to kill that shirtless guy. It is a forest area in the autumn and part of the Charr Territory. The portal is at the east border of wayfairer foothills (a bit to the north, but mind you, in the far north-east corner is a portal to a level 70-80 map!)

2: Snowden drift. This is Norn Territory and in the snow with high mountains. the portal is in the northwest corner of wayfairer foothills.

3: Kessex Hills. This is human territory. Once this was a blushing open area with green hills and blue lakes. Recently the Krait and the nightmare court build here a gigantic tower that blew up and left half of the map destroyed (but still plenty to do there!)
To get there, go to houlbrak, travel to Lion’s Arch using the asura portal and then onward to Divnity reach. From there exit to the south and go to the south of the human startermap (queensdale). There are portals to Kessex hills at the south west and south east corner.

4: Brisban wildlands: jungle area and territory claimed both by Asura and Sylvari with also a big Skritt town in the central mountain. To reach this, go to lion’s Arch. Go then to rata sum, find the portal to Metrica province (the town on the top level is a triangle, you need one of the portals in the east corner of that triangle). From there cross this startermap to the north-east corner to enter brisban wildlands.

Alternatively, you can also do the other starterarea’s. See above for queensdale (human) and Metrica province (Asura). From caledon forrest go through Lion’s Arch to the grove (sylvari capital) and from the top level of the town leave through the far-north exit. For Plains of Ashford (charr) go to the black citadel and go through the eastern exit.