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.
It's a little subjective. If you don't do any map completion, jumping puzzles, or events and just move from story mission to story mission, you can do it in a few days. Hardcore speed runners can probably do it in less. Story chapters unlock every 10 character levels, ensuring you're at max level when you get to the end of the core game.
There aren't many achievements tied to the core game story. Most of the PvE achievements are related to things in the open world until expansions where achievements also exist in story instances. I've played since beta and haven't completed all of them. Achievements like "Shield Master" just take so much time, because you have to get 5,000 killing blows with a shield.
"All PvE achievements" is a huge undertaking, even if you're just talking about the core game; there are things in there like Fractal God, which will take probably a year or so of dedicated grinding, and God Walking Amongst Mere Mortals, which will require finishing a huge number of achievements in a totally different game. I've been playing since a year after launch, and I'm nowhere close to having all the core achievements.
MMO achievements aren't generally designed for it to be feasible for a single player to finish all of them. MMOs are designed to be games that you play forever, or at least until they shut the servers down (and sometimes long after that; look at City of Heroes). Because of that, achievements are more like things to have to work towards if there's nothing else you want to go for until the next content update comes out.
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.
I haven’t played in a few years, but when I 100%’d on my second character it took me a year or so of daily play. I can’t be sure of total hours spent, but it wasn’t insignificant.
Ignoring the all achievements part, story and world exploration could be finished in a week or in like 6 months. Honestly my suggestion would be to not rush it as it defeats the purpose