You don't see your friends chara name in your friendslist or so?
We just logged in yesterday for some minutes, we didnt play together or adding each other, yet.
He just know the second part of his charactername & he didnt know that the name is neccessary for the next log in.
So we have to wait, i was very hyped and its pissing me off a little bit 
Henchmen are definitely good enough to get you through. They were good enough on release and since then it's only gotten easier. Most notably, Arenanet stopped caring about balance around 2010 so the tools at your disposal are significantly more powerful than they were in 2008 (though your access to them will be limited if you're only buying one campaign) and the henchmen bars were updated (around 2010 if memory serves) so that they're at the very least decent (some of them even roughly resemble meta bars). Ultimately, you don't need to worry about being stuck with henchmen - if you're struggling it won't be because their bars aren't viable.
As an aside, why factions? If you're only getting one campaign I'd be inclined to recommend nightfall. You could also try contacting support to get access to your old account, though that will take a while and will be dependent on how much information you have on hand.
Thank you for your answer 
I have no access to my old E-Mail adress.
Yesterday we decided to play the orginal GW first, i bought 2 keys 10 euro each.
We also looked for some builds, but for them we need the skills from the other AddOns. But i found a beginners guide with some tips for the Ranger, my friend will play elementalist.
Yesterday we register our accounts and characters, but my friend forgot the name of his character, so he isnt able to log in. Because of that we have to wait for an answer from the support. 
Hello,
First sorry for my english, it isnt perfect.
Me and a friend want to try Guild Wars 1. I played it 12 years ago a little bit, but i forgot everything.
We want to try Guild Wars Factions first, because the keys are not so expensive and first we want to see if it makes sense playing it in 2020. I remember Guild Wars PvE was harder than most MMO's today, but maybe it was just because i was a young boy without any experience of roleplaygames. Is it possible to come through the game with a friend, maybe with some good builds? The player population is low, so we mostly need to play with 6 other NPC's, are these NPC's good enough to complete the storyline?
Greetings
