Guild Wars 2

So after i bought GW2 i played it for a week and haven’t really touched it since i only have one problem i love the storytelling and combat but leveling in general has been a problem for me. I want to go straight to threw the personal character story content because i enjoy a good story and the story is the main reason i play a game, the combat/game play usually comes second to me. Now of course to continue the main/personal story quests and such you have to level in order to be able to even do more story quests. That in and of itself doesn’t bother me too much, i like the tasks and random events for exp but i rather don’t like the points of interest and vistas nearly as much i prefer combat to get exp. but from what i can tell you have to do every side thing in order to level at a decent pace. i would prefer if i could solely level form story quest and other combat related things, its more entertaining for me but i cant grind because the pace of leveling would be too slow. But my main question is am i missing something? is there more to leveling than doing EVERYTHING in an area then moving on, i feel like you should be able to choose ur style of leveling, so you dont have to do a certain part that you dont want to.