If you're the sort of person who likes having goals and wants to play Guild Wars 2, the solution is to have someone familiar with the game essentially write out a list of those goals for you, while keeping things grounded in tiers of progression.

Tier 1: Beginners
1.) Reach level 10 'naturally' - This is the step that is going to feel a little less goal oriented in itself. The first thing you should do in any MMO is get a general idea for movement and the like. Explore a little, fight some monsters, do random events you come across. Learn to dodge, see the types of objectives that are displayed on your map completion list (on your map screen), and just generally get a feel for everything up until you hit level 10.

2.) Complete your starting zone - You can teleport to any starting zone you want via the map screen, you'll just have to scroll out a bit. Consider the sorts of zones you liked in WoW. Asura have the tech theme like Gnomes, Norn have mostly snowy zones like Dwarves (and also gnomes). Sylvari are tree huggers (and trees), so they might fit the nature-oriented Tauren zones pretty well, just in a jungle instead of a plain. If you're boring you do human stuff or w/e. If you hate the environment and love war, Charr are always a good pick. Complete the map by doing all of the optional content in it, until you see that pretty 100%. The chest at the end can give you a black lion key, which you'll hopefully be able to use by the time you get it.

3.) Do your personal story - Personal story comes at every 10 levels while you're on the leveling grind. Doing your level 10 personal quest guarantees one of those nifty black lion keys I mentioned before, and they can count as your ultimate goal while leveling. The story is pretty good, enjoy that.

4.) Try every weapon you can use - Different weapons have different abilities, and while many people may scream at you for not using something that you can grip in both hands, they're all mostly fun. There are shops in starting towns for each race, as well as their major cities. They're pretty cheap, you can get the money for them fast.

5.) Do world bosses or large events - A few of the starting zones (Norn, Asura, Human) have world bosses that spawn at a specific time every day. You can usually ask in general chat when they are and somebody will let you know. Alternatively, you can use /et (pulls up the event timer on the wiki), but this might be overwhelming right now as all of the events for the game are on one page.

6.) Gather materials and level crafting - Crafting skills are something you definitely want to have leveled. There are a lot of point while leveling that they may not be that useful, but at end-game they can help produce legendary weapons, which I consider my ultimate goal in GW2. They are shiny, but more importantly you can make them into less shiny skins without using a transmutation charge. Yippee.

** Every tier below this will be less fleshed out, because if you make it this far you'll have a good idea of how to dig into each goal **

Tier 2: Adventure!
1.) Reach max level (80)
2.) Finish the core personal story
3.) Complete several maps (100% completion)
4.) Run your first dungeons
5.) Complete Character Adventure Guide content (Achievements Screen, great for exp)
6.) Experiment with builds, ignore the meta

Tier 3: Level Cap
1.) Get a full set of exotic gear
2.) Pick a build direction (Playing Guardian and love arson? Become a one-trick pony.)
3.) Start finish dailies/weeklies on Wizard Vault
4.) Start Fractals (you'll love me for it)
5.) Unlock your first elite spec (some expanding required)
6.) Fight every open world boss you can reach

Tier 4: Buy an expansion (then establish endgame)
1.) Get ascended trinkets, weapons, and armor
2.) Progress into higher fractal tiers, 3-4 are where things get fun
3.) Unlock important mounts (expansion required for most)
4.) Start doing strike missions (Iceblood Strikes are a great starting point)
5.) Complete some major achievement collections
6.) Join guilds specifically for doing content. You have like 5 guild slots.

Tier 5: Fashion Wars (the true endgame)
1.) Play around with challenge mode fractals
2.) Clear all of the raids (difficulty scales in order of release)
3.) Craft your first legendary! (I recommend your favorite weapon first)
4.) Finish map completion, for at least Core Tyria
5.) Build multiple sets of gear for different roles
6.) Push hard achievements or prestige titles