Hello all,

I am a brand new player and first time MMOer. Right now, I'm at level 15 with no story content available until I hit level 20. Where are good places to go that are level appropriate? I'm stuck in Hoelbrak with absolutely no idea where to go for some action.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

There's a few options for you to level from here.

1. Map completion! Run around your level-appropriate map and find points of interest, discover vistas, complete renown hearts, and unlock skill points. Your compass (upper-right) will point you to the nearest "thing", but be sure to also complete events along the way and try to take backroads. Finding hidden areas like jumping puzzles will also grant you experience, and will break up the pacing a bit. Remember to explore cities, as well, because they're some of the fastest maps to 100% and can be done at any level.
2. Take the local asura gate (in Hoelbrak, it's the big, purple portal west of the Great Lodge) to Lion's Arch. From there, you can hop a gate to any other major city and continue exploring low-level maps in other regions of the world. Do this if the Shiverpeaks start getting boring, or you want to party with someone of a different race for map completion or their personal story.
3. World vs. world. You may not have the shortcut icon unlocked on your account, yet, but you'll have a hotkey binding to open the WvW interface (I think it's "B" by default). From there, jump into any of the maps and find a commander to follow. You'll recognize them by the colored tags that show up above their head and on your mini-map. Stick close and follow their instructions to maximize your loot and experience gains. One warning: the Edge of the Mists map is typically populated with experience-farming zergs, which means both that you'll level about as quickly as is possible in GW2 and that you won't really get a sense of actual WvW gameplay. Use it as a nuclear option.
4. Player vs. player. You won't accrue experience while participating in PvP, nor will you unlock many of the traits that you'd obtain in PvE and WvW. That said, PvP reward tracks throw Tomes of Knowledge (free character levels) and Scrolls of Knowledge (free skill points) at you like mad. It may be an iffy idea if you're just starting to come to terms with how you handle yourself in combat, but it's an excellent way to level alts.

That's everything off the top of my head. If you have any further questions, I might have already answered them here. Feel free to ask away, though!

@jack_lafayette: Thank you so much. I'm having fun with the game, but it really doesn't tell you jack about what to do, which is super intimidating for my first MMO experience. Thanks again.

This is actually why I kinda stopped playing that game. I always felt like I was running out of stuff to do. Levelling up became more of a slog because I was always looking around my map trying to figure out what the hell I can do next. That was a pretty stark opposition to mmo's like... I don't know.. rift where you seem to always have more to do.