I'm excited for you! lol. I really hope you can enjoy yourself and some enjoyment in the game.

You'll definitely have plenty to keep yourself busy with just working through the story alone (if that's your thing), or maybe even just exploring and checking out all the new areas. One little suggestion, but you may want to do the first quest (I
think it's the first one) in Path of Fire in order to unlock your first mount. After you get that, you can switch back to whatever story you want to focus on, but the mount will remain. Exploring by foot can be nice, but it's also nice knowing you can speed things up a wee bit.....if you so choose.
The mounts though...I love how they've gone about them in the game. Don't want to spoil anything, but they each come with their own unique abilities that you can use in different ways to get around the world. And they have actual physics! They take a few steps to get going/stop, actually lean into turns, you look over your shoulder when you're walking backwards, all sorts of little details that just make em fit so well. It's definitely my favorite mount system in all the games I've played.
Soo, this would totally be like the blind leading the blind, but if you ever want a body to tag along with (and probably make you feel amazing about your own skill..), my contact there is arooboo.5143. But no pressure!
That's really a shame about the guild fallout. :/ People can really suck at times, and it's amazing how crazy people can get over a video game. Like, I get it, emotions can run high..,but....c'mon! But on a happier not, good choice with the charr! Non-human characters are definitely the way to go.
