GW2 80

So now you're at 80, and a shit ton of content has just opened up and it's crazy overwhelming because literally everything is at max level, but it's not too bad if you can group the main "endgame" things together

**Story**
Because of bad decisions, Living World season 1 has been pretty much entirely removed. They did loads of crazy shit dynamically adding and removing content every two weeks, but it was the worst decision anyone ever made. The crux of the story is that there was a rogue sylvari called Scarlet who went legitimately insane and tried to kill everyone. She ended up destroying Lion's Arch, and was then killed by the player and the main cast 2.0 - Kasmeer, Marjory, Brahm, Rox, and Taimi. They rebuilt Lion's arch and this is where the story picks up.
From here, it's Living World season 2 which is 8 episodes long. It has a nice linear story in the interface, and is done through instances and some world content. With this they added two maps, Dry Top and The Silverwastes, and the story introduces you to those zones. This sets up the first expansion...
Heart of Thorns. This is done in 4 acts over 4 zones - Verdant Brink, Auric Basin, Tangled Depths, and Dragon's Stand. Again, like season 2, this has a nice linear story in the interface that you follow through the zones.
After this we have Season 3, which is 6 episodes long, in the same format as S2 and HoT. Every episode of this story adds a brand new zone spread all over the world.
And finally, that all leads in to the new expansion, Path of Fire. This takes you down to the crystal desert in Elona, and has 4 acts spread over 5 zones.

**Content**
The big focus when you're 80 after the story is the map meta events. Every map has an overarching event that culminates in a huge big mapwide effort to do a thing, and it's normally pretty awesome. They started doing this with Dry Top and The Silverwastes, and then took it to another level with Heart of Thorns. There's then the 6 Season 3 maps, and the 5 new Crystal Desert maps.
To start with, you probably want to follow the story as it takes you through all of those maps, since they have a linear progression to begin with story wise. However, once you're done with the story they're all worthwhile to play and they're all great fun. Even once you've finished the map completion for all of these zones, there's still plenty of events to do. Heck, even the launch level 80 zones aren't entirely worthless.

**Instanced Group Content**
Fractals. This is a progressive, 100 level mini dungeon bonanza. As you get to higher levels, it gets harder and harder. By the time you're at the highest levels, it's LEGIT difficult. They're great fun, there's quite a lot of them now, and you can normally get groups for these without too much effort. Having said that, these are by no means the main content at max level, honestly most people tend to just play the maps.
There's also raids. There are two raids, one with 3 wings one with 1 wing, 3 bosses per wing. They're fine. The fights are interesting, but wow handles it so much better.

**Gear**
Gear in GW2 is a good bit different to how it was at launch. It's still pretty easy to buy a full set of exotic gear, but that's no longer the highest tier of gear. Past that is Ascended, which takes a good deal of time and effort to get. Generally it's crafted, and most of the materials are gathered by playing the endgame zones. You can also have it drop in Fractals, and you can buy it with the raid currency.
Ascended gear takes a long time to get - I only have trinkets and one weapon.
Unlike in wow though, the main form of progression at max level isn't gear, its;

**Masteries**
These were added with heart of thorns. When you're max level, depending on the region you're in, you gain experience to train masteries. These are account wide unlocks that give you abilities, unlock stuff, and let you move around the newer maps easier. Once you've reached the XP threshold, you also need a mastery point, which you get from achievements or from a map completion objective. Doing the story nets you a lot of these, so it's definitely worthwile.
Some of the masteries are genuinely awesome, one of the best is in Central Tyria which gives you true autoloot. Everything just pops into your bags and it's absolutely the best thing ever.
This is the main form of progression at max level, it's essentially leveling part 2. But it's account bound and actually pretty neat. Between this, gear, map events, Fractals, and eventually Legendary skins, there's an absolute metric shit ton of stuff to do. Like you don't just run out of content, but at the same time it's not an infinite grind away into the sunset, there's a properly defined end to everything you want to do or get.

**Elite Specs**
Elite specs are essentially subclasses, that give you access to an extra weapon and loads of funky abilities. To train them you need a ton of hero points, and you won't get enough just doing the old world content. Once you're in Heart of Thorns of Path of Fire maps, each hero challenge gives you 10 hero points, so you start to unlock them pretty quickly. It took me about 5 hours to fully unlock the new one on my ranger, and you don't need anywhere close to all of them to get everything unlocked.


**What to do**
When you hit 80, even before you start doing the max level storylines, you need to do two things out of order. The first is you need to start the Path of Fire story, and complete the first mission. This will get you your mount, which is REALLY fun, and makes general travel great.
Second, you need to start the Heart of Thorns story, go to Verdant Brink, and get the first gliding mastery. This allows you to use a glider everywhere. Between the mounts and the glider, it makes generally moving around the maps and the world great fun, and it will make doing the story and moving around the Heart of Thorns maps a lot easier.

After this, do Season 2, Heart of Thorns, Season 3, then Path of Fire. By this point, you'll know where you stand with the game, and what there is to do and how to do it.