How long would it take to beat the core game, just the pve side?
I'm curious how long it would take a NEW player to beat the core game? If they had access to the wiki and when needed YouTube but didn't have someone standing next to them telling them what to do. In other words they try the jumping puzzle or what ever they were trying to do a few times and if they failed, then go look it up. How long do you think it would take in hours?
And I mean the main story and all achievements for pve.
As people have been saying, the real gotcha here is the all achievements part. achievements in gw2 are an essentially endless task and activity to go for. I don't think anyone in the entire game has all of them.
The expansions add even more but some of the most time consuming are actually in the base game, and when I say time consuming, I mean single achievements which would take years of non-stop grinding. Not trying to discourage you, I just want you to understand that completing all achievements in this game isn't a realistic goal. You can certainly play lots of the game in a reasonable amount of time, though.