Are skirmishes /instances required?

[Arbatax]

As a rather new player (level 21 Elf Hunter), I took the quest to talk to the Skirmish Master. He put me through a kind of tutorial, defending Bree.

I have to say that I find the whole experience very boring and if that is how the game will continue, I will quit. Better to know now than later.

My question is therefore: Are skirmishes really necessary to complete the game? Or could I safely skip them? Same for other "instances" on the Instance Finder panel. Think of Helm's Deep, which I quit halfway out of sheer annoyance with the complexity of what I consider a very uninteresting chore. And very inelegant, if I may say, because completely out of sequence of the "journey", which is for me the heart of the novels.

I hope I am wrong and LOTRO is not another "hack and slash" game. Thanks for any info on this.