You are not locked to a specific path (except your Destiny quest NPC is always for your character’s race). I think the levelling was intended to be through race-related areas, like so:
Race - 1-20 level area - Hub - 20-40 lvl area - 40-55 lvl area - 55-75 lvl area - 75-80 lvl area
Cimmerian - Tortage - Conarch Village - Connal Valley - Field of The Dead - Yimir’s Psss - Eiglophian Mountains - Atzels Approach
Aquilonian - Tortage - Old Tarantia - Wild Lands of Zelata - Old Tarantia Nobles District - Thunder River - Old Tarantia Commons District
Stygian - Tortage - Khemi - Khopshef Province - Turan - Dead Man’s Hand - Kheshatta / Dragon’s Spine
Khitan - Tortage - Gateway To Khitai Trading Village - Gateway To Khitai - Turan ? -Dead Man’s Hand ? (level 40-75 Khitan specific areas suspiciously missing, I guess use one or two from any other race) - Northern Grasslands
Personally I prefer to go with Gateway to Khitai after the Tortage - until lvl ~37 then move on to OT Nobles District doing both Forgotten City+Breach and Villa Dungeons, do the Armsman Arena as soon as levelled enough for it and then Turan (Coast of Ardashir), followed by Conan’s quests in Atzels - then can start raiding tier one (lvl60+ raids) and continue Atzels until you can do Northern Grasslands quests around level 76 - Khitai factions and outdoors quests after that to level 80.
******************************** other Guides posted by me *********************************
[AOC Scripts: What are they? How to make or modify scripts etc]
[Circumventing the Game Errors (revival of old topic)]
[Parsers - setting up, using, interpreting, tips and tricks, etc]
[Enigmata of Yag picture guide to orbs, teleports, ways to top, etc]