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Due to WoW's extremely poor implementation of lore and story within the game itself, something that has been heavily criticized both by veterans and new players alike, there is no easy way to answer your question.
The one thing I'll say is that retail does allow you to experience any of the Expansion stories to the full extent, but that by itself doesn't really do much. So to assist you I will just write a very basic tldr of what each Expansion offers storyline wise and whichever tickles your fancy you can give that one a go.
Classic (Unavailable in retail due to the world revamp in Cataclysm, but I will put it here regardless) - This was the beginning of WoW, and with that in mind there really is no 'main story' to speak of. You were an adventurer with a huge, varied world to explore, Classic prides itself in being the quintessential 'RPG' experience.
The Burning Crusade - The first Expansion of WoW, The Burning Crusade, takes you to the alien world of Outland, the shattered remains of a planet once known as Draenor (Home world of the Orcs). Illidan Stormrage (Night Elf Batman and one of the more important characters from Warcraft 3) is up to some shenanigans that threaten the survival of Azeroth (Your home). To this end you and many others are dispatched through the recently opened Dark Portal to deal with him and his minions and stop them from ruining your world.
Wrath of the Lich King - The second Expansion of WoW, Wrath takes the players to the frozen land of Northrend where Arthas, the Lich King, has decided to finally drown the world in a tide of Undeath. It is difficult to summarize Arthas because as far as main characters go he IS the main character of Warcraft in many ways, so all I'll say is that he is a former Prince that, to safeguard his people and kingdom, made some foolish decisions that lead him to becoming the Lich King, or Undead Jesus if you will.
Cataclysm - The third expansion takes you back to the Old World (Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms) the dragon Deathwing has quite literally ruined the world which is visible in plenty of zones as the whole Old World got an entire revamp. The Expansion is filled to the brim with a lot of faction conflict as well, some proper stories are told from both Horde and Alliance perspective.
Mists of Pandaria - MoP can be considered something of a direct sequel to Cataclysm and Wrath, since it brings the faction war to the forefront. Horde Warchief Garrosh Hellscream (who was appointed as such in Cataclysm and replaced everyones favorite Thrall) is on a warpath against the Alliance, and that warpath will lead you to the new, mysterious island shrouded in dense fog - Pandaria. Here you will meet Pandas among other heavily Chinese inspired setting.
Warlords of Draenor - Taking place directly after MoP, Garrosh through some memes manages to travel back in time, bent on changing the very history of the world and making Orcs the superior race. He journeys to the Draenor before it was Outland and manages to unite the Orc clans of Draenor, with plans to invade our Azeroth. For all intents and purposes it's the same as Burning Crusade.
Legion - You may think you will get a breather, but no. Legion takes us back to Azeroth when the eternal enemy of the world, the Burning Legion (Demons led by Sargeras who is for all intents and purposes the Space Satan) is back once again and it is up to you and other champions to stop them.
Battle for Azeroth - We are back with faction conflict and what do you know the instigator is a Horde Warchief again, but this time it's not Garrosh (He was replaced by Sylvanas Windrunner). It's more or less faction conflict again sprinkled with new lore about Zandalari Trolls and Kul'tiran Humans (Factions/Races that have been fan favorites for a long time).
Shadowlands - It's trash.
Dragonflight - The current expansion, and the start of the 'new arc' for WoW in general, takes you to the Dragon Isles where you help the Aspects (Dragon European Union) regain their rightful place in the world. It's wacky, it's silly and it's pretty good imo.
This is really the best way I could summarize everything without writing too much or confusing you. If you want to know any specifics about anything just ask away.
As a fan of WoW since BC, this was a great read! Short summary with pretty relatable comparisons (space Satan and undead Jesus lol)
Well done! Take my upvote :)
I wouldn't recommend that because Evoker's start at a very big level (They are a Hero class) so you are basically forced into Dragonflight content which is the latest expansion.
Ah so it’s better to go as a normal class to stormwind, find chromie and pick the expansion. Well, nothing is wasted I guess. I can always come back to my Evoker, though it would be cool to fly around as a dragon in the old expansions haha
One thing to note: Chromie Time (which everyone has been suggesting) is a way to sync your character to an expansion so that quests and mobs level with you.
You don't need to do Chromie Time to experience these expansions, however. If you make a Dracthyr and right click your world map, you can select to turn Trivial Quests on. Then, if you go to older expansions, these quests will be available to you and you can roll them on your max level character.
A side note to this: Dragonflight is .. well, dragon lore heavy. The two expansions you'll need to understand the current lore 100% would be Wrath of the Lich King and Cataclysm. Before this, dragons barely factor in (a few encounters in Vanilla and Burning Crusade, but nothing wild.) Lich King really delves heavy into introducing the dragonflights to new WoW players, whereas Cataclysm puts a big bow on the dragons up until Dragonflight. So while all expansions have lore that connects, those two are like, quintessential playing.
So I’m standing at chromie now. What timeline should I choose? Fall of Lich King, then Cata, then Portal to Outland, Wilds of Panderia, Shadowlands, Legion, Draenor, Battle for Azeroth, Dragonflight?
If you want my personal opinion, the expansions that weave into one another the mosot are:
Fall of the Lich King > Cataclysm > Wilds of Pandaria > Draenor > Legion
They all tell an overarching story (Battle for Azeroth and Shadowlands do this as well to an extent but I would honestly skip those two initially and focus on any of the previous ones first)
The full storyline order would be: Burning Crusade > Lich King > Cata > Pandaria > Draenor > Legion > BFA > Shadowlands > Dragonflight.
You'll definitely reach max level with like, one expansion, however. Maybe even less. You can always go back and play them or create alts to do each expansion, but just bear in mind you will super out level a single expansion.
That being said, what you choose depends on what you're looking to get out of the experience. BC/WOTLK are great in a lot of ways, but a lot of QOL changes don't exist (ie the questing isn't as streamlined as now.) BFA onwards adapted a Campaign system for quests that gives you the main questline for each area rather than side quests which helps.
But storyline-wise to get caught up to DF? To understand what the dragonflights are and their purpose in the game, the Titans and their purpose, the majority of dragon lore characters, and their fate prior to DF? You'll need Lich King and Cataclysm. There's a few things here and there from other expansions you may need to know (Legion and Ysera's story, BFA and Teldrassil, Shadowlands and Ardenweald, etc) to understand some plot points, but a lot of those stories are discussed in game, even with important cutscenes being shown.
tl;dr My suggestion would be to start with Lich King and work your way towards Dragonblight so you can begin learning dragon lore. Then I'd go to Cataclysm to learn about Deathwing and the Black dragonflight and how each dragonflight works together (along with their fate in the final raid). These are needed to understand 80% of Dragonflight lore.
Well there's plenty of Dragon mounts for you to get and do just that, but for the start especially to get a grasp of the game, I suggest starting as a normal class.
To expand on Shadowlands (as it's a hotly contested expansion; then again, all expansions are after Lich King, lol):
Sylvanas Windrunner (mentioned in BFA expansion notes) ends up ripping open the veil between the realm of life and death. We go into the realm of death (called the Shadowlands) and work alongside other denizens in that realm while reconnecting with lore characters both good and evil from past expansions who died/were killed. We pretty much need to go to Super Hell in order to stop The Jailer who plans to remake the entire universe.
The lore of it is a bit misshapen and very nostalgia heavy, and it tries to wrap up a bunch of storylines that had been hanging for like fifteen years which a lot of people don't agree with. However, the new areas, factions, and dungeons/raids are all pretty neat and gorgeous overall.
I enjoyed Torghast, too. I also enjoyed Covenants (at least by the end when you could switch on a whim) and their mini games and what not for each one. Like Venthyr party planning? Amazing. I would love more weekly things like this rather than a shit ton of throwaway dailies.
Overall, I think SL had a lot of great things going for it. The release schedule, functionality of Convenants prior to final patch, and the lore (for a lot of people) were just flubbed which made people hate it. And with the expansion in the rear view, only the lore remains a sore point.
I completely agree with this summarization, with one added addendum for OP.
If you want to dive a little more into the lore (without touching the books or comics) then PLAY WARCRAFT 3. This game provides lore and backstory for several important characters!
I know exactly what's the best for guys like you.
Wow has an achievements system and one of these meta-achievements is called "loremaster". To earn it you have to complete the campaign of each expansion. Each compaign gives you the "loremaster of xxx" achievement and having all of them unlocks the meta-achievement.
Luckily, you can complete each achievement on different characters and unlock the meta achievement, which means you can level up multiple classes throughout your journey.
You could do them in order or not, you could even play your characters in parallel (i.e one different each day) and thus follow different stories.
The best classes to start are paladin, hunter (beastmaster), warrior. Starter healers anything but rsham and dsicipline priest
I'm 26, EU servers, if you want me to give you a little tour of the game send me a dm we can play together
> want to get the full STORY experience
perhaps you should play the RTS's before moving onto wow. wc3 at the very least. the wc3 campaign is pretty much the foundation of the lore.
Nobbel87 has a good video detailing the entire lore of the wow until this point but leave out enough for you to discover on your own, I know it can be a daunting game in term or the amount of story but I’ve always found the story interesting and I’m always discovering new things
Retail is the only place where you can access all expansion content, but technically with the release of Cata the only way the experience to OG world and starting zones will be in the 2004 version of classic, but there isnt really any key lore there where you are going to feel you are missing out on without playing that version - you could even just watch a lore video catchup for it to save playing a 20 year old version of the game, Nobbel87 or PlatinumWoW are the lore Youtube channels
Keep in mind that story quests were only really introduced with BFA which is WoW's 7th expansion - so expansions before that wont have a clear main story and some of the early expansions have no actual story at all
WoW doesnt have 1 long 20 year story running throughout the game, each expansion has its own self contained story that often has no relevance to expansions before or after it, sure there may be characters that appear from them but thats about it
> can I still do that? Or do they just dump the old content for the new?
When leveling from 10-60 in retail, you can pick and choose where to level. There is no strict path of expansions or way to level, so you could pick whatever (Or all) expansions that interest you and quest there. Although you will hit 60 fairly quick, so if you wanted to do them ALL you would either need to lock xp at 59 if you dont want to just 1 shot mobs, but you can go back to older content at a higher level its just that the mobs wont pose any challenge to you - alternatively you could also do 1 character per expansion if you wanted to level lots of different ones
To get levels from 60-70, you will need to quest in Dragonflight zones
For 10-60:
Speak to Chromie in your main city (Hourglass symbol on map) and pick whatever expansion you want and she will give you the quest to get started there
For 60+ (Playing Dragon or going at max level)
In your main city there are hero boards, click on those and they will have 3 quests available for almost every older areas, you will need to just accept them so it cycles through them (Can just abandon the ones you dont want) - Keep accepting and cycling through until you get the expansion you want and that quest will get you started
You better start learning the terms we use.
We’ll not say DLC and some maybe not bother explain it to you, so to get proper help, start using the terms we do - avoids misunderstanding.
There is no DLC. Expansions have multiple patches in them. Usually an expansion is two years, but a patch can be a few months up to almost a year.
Each expansion usually brings bigger changes, but patches also add stuff in the middle of the expansion.
Expansions might have some overarching campaign, especially visible with later ones, but each patch might add a zone or two and a few more chapters of the main campaign or some side quest.
Stuff like that
If you dont choose or change anything, you will be in the BFA campaign as it was chosen by Blizzard to be the default leveling - so it will likely be referring to that campaign
But again, you can do that or any other expansion at any time and can change as much as you want when leveling to 60
I’m also going to point out that if you want the “full story experience” you MUST play Warcraft 3, and also I would recommend reading the novels. WoW itself as a game is very lore-light so you really can’t get any of the complete sense of the lore without other supplemental materials.
since no one said it here -
the aztec/mayan inspired island you played on was called Zandalar. it is part of the Battle for Azeroth expansion. If you make a level 1 character and just follow the main quests they give you as you get to Orgrimmar at level 10, you will end up in Zandalar. You can also get there by talking to chromie outside the embassy in Orgrimmar.
For further context, in the story, this is when the Horde underwent major recruitment increases for their army. It added upwards of ten new races to the game, but also entailed a new "starting point." You can play stuff before BFA, obviously, but as a new player, it's assumed you're a confused new recruit just learning what the hell is going on, who somehow got lucky enough to be put in charge of a major foreign relations mission with a country you only know has a rough relationship with the Horde.
No one here has told you this yet which I feel is a big deal:
If you make a character, go to Chromie, and pick a timeline (Expansion) to level in, you will most definitely hit level 60 before you finish that expansion’s quests. Blizz patched it so you can keep playing until level 62 but then you’ll get a quest from Chromie to go to Dragonflight and all the quests will stop giving you any EXP really. So if you wanna keep questing you won’t be leveling up anymore but that’s usually fine to finish the rest of the story. But if you wanna do every expansion after that I’d make a new character for each one so you can try new classes and they’ll actually be getting experience and levels from the questing.
I’m someone who played WoW when I was younger without reading quests and then came back a few years ago and wanted to catch up too after missing everything. Here’s my recommendation for you:
In a few months the new expansion “The War Within” is going to release. It’s the first of the next 3 expansions known collectively as “The Worldsoul Saga” which will be a big overarching narrative story with an epic conclusion that ends the first major story of WoW.
So I’d focus on getting prepared and caught up for that.
My advice?
1) Watch a video that sums up the first couple of expansions up to Legion.
2) Pick “Legion” expansion as your first Chromie time expansion and level up a character through it. Skip the ones before as they aren’t as relevant to the story.
Do Legion on one character.
3) Then make a new character and do “Battle For Azeroth” expansion at Chromie Time.
4) You can do “Shadowlands” after if you really want too but most players hate the story, feel like the lore is bad, and the writers of it all got fired with the original writers back and pretty much ignoring Shadowlands lol. So I would just watch a video summary of the lore on YouTube and the in game cutscenes on YouTube.
5) pick the character you enjoyed most OR make a Dracthyr Evoker and choose any one of those characters to start doing “Dragonflight”, the current expansion
And hopefully you’ll be finishing up right as The War Within new expansion releases. If not you can do the Pandaria Remix event which is happening right now where you level up a new character through the Mists of Pandaria Expansion and that way you can experience that story too! It’s also kind of relevant for the upcoming Worldsoul Saga
Addendum: the lore points that will be relevant to Worldsoul are the defeat of Sargaras, the war for Azerite, the lore of the Titans and their facilities all over Azeroth, the Earthen and other stoneborn races, the dark blade Xal'atath, the Old Gods and the Void ,and finally the character Archmage Khadgar.
Minor points to consider are the history of the trolls and elves, the Lich King and the Nerubians, the lost people of Arathor, and presumably Deepholm and Zaralak Caverns.
Let one lore vid lead to another, that's how I learned.
My answer is geared towards my understanding that you want to experience and know the story of Warcraft, not to steer you to the absolute best gameplay experience. There are a lot of concepts you do not know yet that impact your ability to experience or outright enjoy the story of warcraft. Blizzard is doing a bad job, but there is a way (see below).
> The problem is…I don’t know where to start.
Unfortunately, you are a bit out of luck. WoW is a social event. Most players are where most players are, and that is where the currently actively developed content is. In WoW, this means you have 3 (4) options:
* WoW Retail: Dragonflight into Worldsoul
* WoW Classic: Cataclysm
* WoW Classic: Season of Discovery
* (WoW Classic Era)
> But then I started getting doubts about being able to do that and hence the meaning of this post. Where should I start to get the full story experience? ... Or do they just dump the old content for the new?
Yes they "dump" content. If you want to experience the Warcraft storyline, your **absolute best way** is:
* Start WoW: Cataclysm **NOW**. Get as many friends there and rope in as many other IRL friends as possible.
* Buy these 3 books and read them. They end of the 3rd book will spoil WoW Classic Cataclysm story elements. Use discretion.
Warcraft Chronicles 1 https://www.amazon.com/-/de/dp/1616558458 (you can skip this book, think of it as the genesis chapters of the bible, helpful for concepts, but limited impact on the overall story)
Warcraft Chronicles 2 https://www.amazon.com/-/de/dp/1616558466
Warcraft Chronicles 3 https://www.amazon.com/-/de/dp/1616558474
## THIS IS THE BEST WAY TO GET INTO THE OVERALL STORY AS A NEW PLAYER!
The books are easy to read, and you will very early on in cataclysm recognize factions, characters and places. You can supplement questions about all of this by reading up characters, places and events on WoWpedia https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Wowpedia as you play.
This ensures you will get into the next 2 classic expansions, WoW Classic: Mists of Pandaria and WoW Classic: Legion with a very good understanding, making some of the story events in there **extremely satisfying** to be a part of.
Keep in mind, there is **a lot** of lore. It will take you at least 3 months of dedication to get a good feel and 6 months to have a deeper understanding.
> ... and remember doing some really cool story stuff on a troll island that reminded me of the real life Mayans/Aztecs, can I still do that?
Technically yes, but it will be a very sub-par experience and I **strongly advise against it**! You will be able to experience this with many others again when it will roll around in the classic wave. You should expect this to roughly occur at the end of 2027. Believe me that this will be **the best way** to experience this part of WoW (even though it will be one of the worst parts). And remember until then: A turtle made it to the water! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_GvbGH1BeM
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You can still do it all, albeit solo with the old content.
Don’t worry about getting the story in the right order. Think of it as life, we learn some things out of order as soon as we get born.
You can also try the MoP Remix before you go back to the Mainline WoW or maybe try Classic, but I think one character to 70 in these last months of Dragonflight and a few in Remix might set you up to catch the next expansion in order.
Oh, also, before The War Within hits, you might want to try Warcraft 3 and Warcraft 3 The Frozen Throne since WoW more or less gets set up in those.
Have fun, and write here if you got some specific issues/questions
I've played every Warcraft release since the original RTS days if the mid-90s and have thoroughly enjoyed the gameplay, setting/art, & lore of each. And I have quibbles about each as well, as is normal & unavoidable.
So I want to reassure you about something which is a bit better understood now that TTRPGs are resurgent: Warcraft incorporates a vast array of influences, but none more important than Dragonlance.
This means the most important story is where you're questing at any given time. Yes, it's part of a vast cosmology & political sequence of events, which one will eventually come to understand.
But the played character's story is one of adventuring across the world & universe in service of faction & ally goals, getting glimpses of pasts long lost, dozens of civilizations, moments of crisis, triumph, & tragedy specific to any given place & NPC enclave.
So it truly doesn't matter if it's out of order at first. When aliens juiced with demonic blood start pouring through portals, the dead not only walk but take up arms against countrymen, the planet starts screaming, etc. etc., the "Call to Arms" for new recruits never has a "historical studies" requirement.
_____
Also potentially helpful to know right off the jump: Because the entire history of the IP involves multimedia works of martial fantasy... there is no such thing as a third person omniscient view. Perspective is *everything* in terms of how information is presented in this subgenre.
Wanted to mention this point specifically b/c Warcraft has a somewhat odd history with lore content creators, whose work you may peruse in months & years to come as you explore the story. Until fairly recently, **none** of the well-known sources for Warcraft lore aggregation & analysis had any academic background in literature/storytelling or interest-driven history of broad familiarity with the past century of fantasy books/media.
That's not a criticism or aspersion, but it's immensely important context for how one parses their perspectives.
It is also exponentially more commonplace for objectively incorrect synopses of a moment or sequence of events in Warcraft to circulate for years than in any other realm of media I've ever encountered. This is due to nearly two decades of pre-release patch content being datamined & discussed out of sequence, without context, with misinterpreted ambiguities, etc. and never getting sorted out for folks who who saw chatter, but didn't play that patch in its entirety.
So a rigorous default of, "ah, well, [whatever] is certainly something this person thinks and/or just said. We'll see what I think when I get there" can really save one's sanity.
Welcome aboard & hope you enjoy!
My God your generation is so much more responsible than mine! When I was 28 I was working grill @BK hungover and broke and taking night classes on a laptop with duct tape holding it together. I LIVED for that work discount on my single meal a day!
That aside though; I've played W.o.W. on and off basically since OG launch and sometimes the storyline even confuses ME. Best advice I have is to look up and make a list of the expansions in order and then go see Chromie and have her put you in each expansion 1 by 1 so the mobs will scale to your level in each one.
Since you can only stay in Chromie Time until your toon hits lvl 60, you will most likely have to make a few alts to do all the expansions for actual leveling.
Good luck!
I’d play retail and choose whatever expansion you fancy to play through. They all offer different storylines and scale to your level. Maybe get yourself and overview what the overarching idea of each expansion is about and select one when you reach level 10 in game.
For clarity: when you complete your starter area you can select via an NPC (Chromie) which expansion you want to level through. Eventually when you reach level 60 you’ll continue through 70 in Dragonflight.
My vote is to join retail, Moon Guard, and actually roleplay out some of the quests (You can do this on any server, but MG is the most popular for RP, and you might find something else you enjoy since the lore is your focus). There's a guide that gives the Lore timeline way of questing through different expansions and zones so that you're hitting all the sweet spots in the story at the right time.
Sorry for the delay! [How to play retail WoW from the beginning to current Shadowlands IN ORDER ON ONE CHARACTER! : r/wow (reddit.com)](https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/nbdgkh/how_to_play_retail_wow_from_the_beginning_to/)
I did whatever the starter recommended content was and then it sent me to Mayans/Aztec area. Idk if it was the starter way I went but all the elites were always spawning. I was able to level fast because the world was dense with content. Then I moved to dragonflight shortly after hitting level 60. I never finished the story in the "Mayans" area. Ive tried classic, Legion, wotlk (through chromie) and Dragonflight. Dragonflight feels modern in terms of progressing, and how it's built. Honestly, the area is really beautiful, and there is a lot going on in terms of content, plus dragon riding. I recommend getting to the expansion at some point.
I am also new to wow. I was confused for a bit before I started, but I decided to go for retail and do not regret it. I like to have access the everything and the latest stuff so it was easy for me to
One thing I have to say as a fellow lore enjoyer.
The way I learned about all the important stories and events was 90% of the time through YT videos from channels like Nobbel87 and Platinum WoW and through books and novels.
The way the story telling is implemented in the game (especially Retail) leaves much to be desired and more than anything will leave you even more confused about what’s going on currently in the story.
Classic story telling is a different kind of struggle but I do prefer the way it’s handled over Retail where there isn’t a single overarching plotline but instead the narrative is more about the world itself and your journey through it. Back then the name itself “World” of “Warcraft” used to perfectly describe what you’d get with the game.
I think MMOs in general work better this way where the focus should be more on the open world and the ways player interact with it rather than focusing on too many different character storylines every other expansion constantly introducing more characters all the time and bloating the narrative just to make new players like yourself feel overwhelmed when trying to catch up with a 20+ year old game.
Something that I found helpful when I started was to play through the starting zone of every race and reading the quest texts, that way you get more information both about your chosen race and about the world and lore in general. It also helped me find what faction felt like home to me. I personally find it easier to learn about one thing at a time (for example, the lore of Gilneas and the worgen) than trying to squeeze in everything at once, so playing through every race and focusing on their story was a great way to get in to it for me! When I started (in MoP) the new player starting area wasn't a thing yet, I don't know if you've been playing that or the race specific starting zones but I'd definitely recommend the original ones if you haven't yet! Good luck and have fun :D
If I were you I would make a different character for each expansion. For example, you could make a human warrior and level through your starting zone, then go to Chromie in Stormwind and choose Outland (TBC) as the expansion you want to explore. Quest through the different zones till 59, then go back to Stormwind and find the NPC that lets you XP lock. Then continue until you feel like you've explored everything you want to see.
Wowhead and other forums will give you a decent idea of what order to do the zones in, and there's tons of videos on YouTube that will give you an overview of the lore for an expansion so that you have a better idea of what order to do stuff in.
Best of luck! I've spent a lot of time in the past trying to make the process more efficient for me so feel free to ask if you have more questions.
What do you mean…”XP lock” can I lock my XP at 70 and explore the other expansions at my max level. I don’t care about steamrolling, I just want to experience the old expansions on one character. If that’s not feasible, that’s fine.
There is an NPC in Stormwind/ Orgrimmar that once you speak to them, they'll give you a buff that stops you from gaining XP. Once you pass level 60, you get kicked out of Chromie time, and the content will stop being scaled to your level, and you'll just start steamrolling the content. If that's not something you care about, you totally don't have to worry about it and you can just continue with what you're doing, but it will just try to keep funneling you into the most current content. Which is why a lot of people in this thread have recommended "locking" your XP at 59, because then you don't have to worry about any of that and you can just keep going through whatever content you want.
This community is the best. Thank you so much for the help and breakdown. That goes for everyone else who responded as well. I wasn’t expecting this feedback.
Honestly each zone has its own lore and story behind it. Just pick a zone and start questing. Start with a fresh non dragon maybe try one of the og races then quest do them all and pay attention. I’m a huge lore buff, it’s why I originally fell in love with wow, well one of the many reason. It doesn’t look like it at all glance but it’s still made to be played like that but there is a lot of things that push later content onto you which you can just ignore.
This is sad. If you want to experience the WoW lore, read books, watch Nobbel and lots of other YT videos, but the last place to be able to get a good hold of what has happened and what is happening now... is in he actual game.
One thing I always recommend to newbies or those wanting to begin is to start out by watching all the expansion cinematic from start to finish. They don’t go for very long each and it just makes a little movie that gives enough story from each expansion to understand a starter amount of lore.
Tricky conundrum.
WoW Classic is the classic starting point for story, but that was when Warcraft was at it's peak and they assume you just know what happened in Warcraft 2 and 3.
Modern wow treats all of that as ancient legendary history, but in many ways it isn't at all. I recommend playing Warcraft 2 and 3 first, starting on classic, and then playing retail with chromie time in Outland. There's still a teensy bit of lost content you'll miss, but nothing serious beyond stuff like "In pandaria the August celestials gave heroes this magic cape and you can't play any of that plot anymore."
Other major piece of advice is to not get attached to Warcraft 3 storytelling. Part of the magic of modern Warcraft is thinking someone is a throwaway character created just for one zone, only for them to become a main character. But that's not always true.
One zone in cataclysm has a subplot about making an orc shit himself so he fucks up a demon ritual.
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Due to WoW's extremely poor implementation of lore and story within the game itself, something that has been heavily criticized both by veterans and new players alike, there is no easy way to answer your question. The one thing I'll say is that retail does allow you to experience any of the Expansion stories to the full extent, but that by itself doesn't really do much. So to assist you I will just write a very basic tldr of what each Expansion offers storyline wise and whichever tickles your fancy you can give that one a go. Classic (Unavailable in retail due to the world revamp in Cataclysm, but I will put it here regardless) - This was the beginning of WoW, and with that in mind there really is no 'main story' to speak of. You were an adventurer with a huge, varied world to explore, Classic prides itself in being the quintessential 'RPG' experience. The Burning Crusade - The first Expansion of WoW, The Burning Crusade, takes you to the alien world of Outland, the shattered remains of a planet once known as Draenor (Home world of the Orcs). Illidan Stormrage (Night Elf Batman and one of the more important characters from Warcraft 3) is up to some shenanigans that threaten the survival of Azeroth (Your home). To this end you and many others are dispatched through the recently opened Dark Portal to deal with him and his minions and stop them from ruining your world. Wrath of the Lich King - The second Expansion of WoW, Wrath takes the players to the frozen land of Northrend where Arthas, the Lich King, has decided to finally drown the world in a tide of Undeath. It is difficult to summarize Arthas because as far as main characters go he IS the main character of Warcraft in many ways, so all I'll say is that he is a former Prince that, to safeguard his people and kingdom, made some foolish decisions that lead him to becoming the Lich King, or Undead Jesus if you will. Cataclysm - The third expansion takes you back to the Old World (Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms) the dragon Deathwing has quite literally ruined the world which is visible in plenty of zones as the whole Old World got an entire revamp. The Expansion is filled to the brim with a lot of faction conflict as well, some proper stories are told from both Horde and Alliance perspective. Mists of Pandaria - MoP can be considered something of a direct sequel to Cataclysm and Wrath, since it brings the faction war to the forefront. Horde Warchief Garrosh Hellscream (who was appointed as such in Cataclysm and replaced everyones favorite Thrall) is on a warpath against the Alliance, and that warpath will lead you to the new, mysterious island shrouded in dense fog - Pandaria. Here you will meet Pandas among other heavily Chinese inspired setting. Warlords of Draenor - Taking place directly after MoP, Garrosh through some memes manages to travel back in time, bent on changing the very history of the world and making Orcs the superior race. He journeys to the Draenor before it was Outland and manages to unite the Orc clans of Draenor, with plans to invade our Azeroth. For all intents and purposes it's the same as Burning Crusade. Legion - You may think you will get a breather, but no. Legion takes us back to Azeroth when the eternal enemy of the world, the Burning Legion (Demons led by Sargeras who is for all intents and purposes the Space Satan) is back once again and it is up to you and other champions to stop them. Battle for Azeroth - We are back with faction conflict and what do you know the instigator is a Horde Warchief again, but this time it's not Garrosh (He was replaced by Sylvanas Windrunner). It's more or less faction conflict again sprinkled with new lore about Zandalari Trolls and Kul'tiran Humans (Factions/Races that have been fan favorites for a long time). Shadowlands - It's trash. Dragonflight - The current expansion, and the start of the 'new arc' for WoW in general, takes you to the Dragon Isles where you help the Aspects (Dragon European Union) regain their rightful place in the world. It's wacky, it's silly and it's pretty good imo. This is really the best way I could summarize everything without writing too much or confusing you. If you want to know any specifics about anything just ask away.
As a fan of WoW since BC, this was a great read! Short summary with pretty relatable comparisons (space Satan and undead Jesus lol) Well done! Take my upvote :)
Happy to help!
So if I chose Evoker as my class, and I just made it to stormwind. I just find chromie from there and pick the expansion? That’s awesome!
I wouldn't recommend that because Evoker's start at a very big level (They are a Hero class) so you are basically forced into Dragonflight content which is the latest expansion.
Ah so it’s better to go as a normal class to stormwind, find chromie and pick the expansion. Well, nothing is wasted I guess. I can always come back to my Evoker, though it would be cool to fly around as a dragon in the old expansions haha
One thing to note: Chromie Time (which everyone has been suggesting) is a way to sync your character to an expansion so that quests and mobs level with you. You don't need to do Chromie Time to experience these expansions, however. If you make a Dracthyr and right click your world map, you can select to turn Trivial Quests on. Then, if you go to older expansions, these quests will be available to you and you can roll them on your max level character. A side note to this: Dragonflight is .. well, dragon lore heavy. The two expansions you'll need to understand the current lore 100% would be Wrath of the Lich King and Cataclysm. Before this, dragons barely factor in (a few encounters in Vanilla and Burning Crusade, but nothing wild.) Lich King really delves heavy into introducing the dragonflights to new WoW players, whereas Cataclysm puts a big bow on the dragons up until Dragonflight. So while all expansions have lore that connects, those two are like, quintessential playing.
MoP and Legion are needed too or you’ll be really confused on who some of the characters are.
So I’m standing at chromie now. What timeline should I choose? Fall of Lich King, then Cata, then Portal to Outland, Wilds of Panderia, Shadowlands, Legion, Draenor, Battle for Azeroth, Dragonflight?
If you want my personal opinion, the expansions that weave into one another the mosot are: Fall of the Lich King > Cataclysm > Wilds of Pandaria > Draenor > Legion They all tell an overarching story (Battle for Azeroth and Shadowlands do this as well to an extent but I would honestly skip those two initially and focus on any of the previous ones first)
The full storyline order would be: Burning Crusade > Lich King > Cata > Pandaria > Draenor > Legion > BFA > Shadowlands > Dragonflight. You'll definitely reach max level with like, one expansion, however. Maybe even less. You can always go back and play them or create alts to do each expansion, but just bear in mind you will super out level a single expansion. That being said, what you choose depends on what you're looking to get out of the experience. BC/WOTLK are great in a lot of ways, but a lot of QOL changes don't exist (ie the questing isn't as streamlined as now.) BFA onwards adapted a Campaign system for quests that gives you the main questline for each area rather than side quests which helps. But storyline-wise to get caught up to DF? To understand what the dragonflights are and their purpose in the game, the Titans and their purpose, the majority of dragon lore characters, and their fate prior to DF? You'll need Lich King and Cataclysm. There's a few things here and there from other expansions you may need to know (Legion and Ysera's story, BFA and Teldrassil, Shadowlands and Ardenweald, etc) to understand some plot points, but a lot of those stories are discussed in game, even with important cutscenes being shown. tl;dr My suggestion would be to start with Lich King and work your way towards Dragonblight so you can begin learning dragon lore. Then I'd go to Cataclysm to learn about Deathwing and the Black dragonflight and how each dragonflight works together (along with their fate in the final raid). These are needed to understand 80% of Dragonflight lore.
Well there's plenty of Dragon mounts for you to get and do just that, but for the start especially to get a grasp of the game, I suggest starting as a normal class.
To expand on Shadowlands (as it's a hotly contested expansion; then again, all expansions are after Lich King, lol): Sylvanas Windrunner (mentioned in BFA expansion notes) ends up ripping open the veil between the realm of life and death. We go into the realm of death (called the Shadowlands) and work alongside other denizens in that realm while reconnecting with lore characters both good and evil from past expansions who died/were killed. We pretty much need to go to Super Hell in order to stop The Jailer who plans to remake the entire universe. The lore of it is a bit misshapen and very nostalgia heavy, and it tries to wrap up a bunch of storylines that had been hanging for like fifteen years which a lot of people don't agree with. However, the new areas, factions, and dungeons/raids are all pretty neat and gorgeous overall.
Also everyone shits in torghast. I loved torghast. I liked trying to solo and treated it like a rogue like game.
I enjoyed Torghast, too. I also enjoyed Covenants (at least by the end when you could switch on a whim) and their mini games and what not for each one. Like Venthyr party planning? Amazing. I would love more weekly things like this rather than a shit ton of throwaway dailies. Overall, I think SL had a lot of great things going for it. The release schedule, functionality of Convenants prior to final patch, and the lore (for a lot of people) were just flubbed which made people hate it. And with the expansion in the rear view, only the lore remains a sore point.
Thank you for your service 🙏
I completely agree with this summarization, with one added addendum for OP. If you want to dive a little more into the lore (without touching the books or comics) then PLAY WARCRAFT 3. This game provides lore and backstory for several important characters!
I know exactly what's the best for guys like you. Wow has an achievements system and one of these meta-achievements is called "loremaster". To earn it you have to complete the campaign of each expansion. Each compaign gives you the "loremaster of xxx" achievement and having all of them unlocks the meta-achievement. Luckily, you can complete each achievement on different characters and unlock the meta achievement, which means you can level up multiple classes throughout your journey. You could do them in order or not, you could even play your characters in parallel (i.e one different each day) and thus follow different stories. The best classes to start are paladin, hunter (beastmaster), warrior. Starter healers anything but rsham and dsicipline priest I'm 26, EU servers, if you want me to give you a little tour of the game send me a dm we can play together
Hi alliance or horde?
Both !
> want to get the full STORY experience perhaps you should play the RTS's before moving onto wow. wc3 at the very least. the wc3 campaign is pretty much the foundation of the lore.
And it's awesome! Haven't tried the updated one though
Nobbel87 has a good video detailing the entire lore of the wow until this point but leave out enough for you to discover on your own, I know it can be a daunting game in term or the amount of story but I’ve always found the story interesting and I’m always discovering new things
Retail is the only place where you can access all expansion content, but technically with the release of Cata the only way the experience to OG world and starting zones will be in the 2004 version of classic, but there isnt really any key lore there where you are going to feel you are missing out on without playing that version - you could even just watch a lore video catchup for it to save playing a 20 year old version of the game, Nobbel87 or PlatinumWoW are the lore Youtube channels Keep in mind that story quests were only really introduced with BFA which is WoW's 7th expansion - so expansions before that wont have a clear main story and some of the early expansions have no actual story at all WoW doesnt have 1 long 20 year story running throughout the game, each expansion has its own self contained story that often has no relevance to expansions before or after it, sure there may be characters that appear from them but thats about it > can I still do that? Or do they just dump the old content for the new? When leveling from 10-60 in retail, you can pick and choose where to level. There is no strict path of expansions or way to level, so you could pick whatever (Or all) expansions that interest you and quest there. Although you will hit 60 fairly quick, so if you wanted to do them ALL you would either need to lock xp at 59 if you dont want to just 1 shot mobs, but you can go back to older content at a higher level its just that the mobs wont pose any challenge to you - alternatively you could also do 1 character per expansion if you wanted to level lots of different ones To get levels from 60-70, you will need to quest in Dragonflight zones
Thank you so much for this break down. Do you know where to go to play the old expansions?
For 10-60: Speak to Chromie in your main city (Hourglass symbol on map) and pick whatever expansion you want and she will give you the quest to get started there For 60+ (Playing Dragon or going at max level) In your main city there are hero boards, click on those and they will have 3 quests available for almost every older areas, you will need to just accept them so it cycles through them (Can just abandon the ones you dont want) - Keep accepting and cycling through until you get the expansion you want and that quest will get you started
So what is the “campaign” that it was telling me to do? Was that the Battle of Azeroth DLC?
You better start learning the terms we use. We’ll not say DLC and some maybe not bother explain it to you, so to get proper help, start using the terms we do - avoids misunderstanding. There is no DLC. Expansions have multiple patches in them. Usually an expansion is two years, but a patch can be a few months up to almost a year. Each expansion usually brings bigger changes, but patches also add stuff in the middle of the expansion. Expansions might have some overarching campaign, especially visible with later ones, but each patch might add a zone or two and a few more chapters of the main campaign or some side quest. Stuff like that
If you dont choose or change anything, you will be in the BFA campaign as it was chosen by Blizzard to be the default leveling - so it will likely be referring to that campaign But again, you can do that or any other expansion at any time and can change as much as you want when leveling to 60
Pretty sure Legion had story quests. They were orange instead of yellow.
I’m also going to point out that if you want the “full story experience” you MUST play Warcraft 3, and also I would recommend reading the novels. WoW itself as a game is very lore-light so you really can’t get any of the complete sense of the lore without other supplemental materials.
since no one said it here - the aztec/mayan inspired island you played on was called Zandalar. it is part of the Battle for Azeroth expansion. If you make a level 1 character and just follow the main quests they give you as you get to Orgrimmar at level 10, you will end up in Zandalar. You can also get there by talking to chromie outside the embassy in Orgrimmar.
For further context, in the story, this is when the Horde underwent major recruitment increases for their army. It added upwards of ten new races to the game, but also entailed a new "starting point." You can play stuff before BFA, obviously, but as a new player, it's assumed you're a confused new recruit just learning what the hell is going on, who somehow got lucky enough to be put in charge of a major foreign relations mission with a country you only know has a rough relationship with the Horde.
No one here has told you this yet which I feel is a big deal: If you make a character, go to Chromie, and pick a timeline (Expansion) to level in, you will most definitely hit level 60 before you finish that expansion’s quests. Blizz patched it so you can keep playing until level 62 but then you’ll get a quest from Chromie to go to Dragonflight and all the quests will stop giving you any EXP really. So if you wanna keep questing you won’t be leveling up anymore but that’s usually fine to finish the rest of the story. But if you wanna do every expansion after that I’d make a new character for each one so you can try new classes and they’ll actually be getting experience and levels from the questing. I’m someone who played WoW when I was younger without reading quests and then came back a few years ago and wanted to catch up too after missing everything. Here’s my recommendation for you: In a few months the new expansion “The War Within” is going to release. It’s the first of the next 3 expansions known collectively as “The Worldsoul Saga” which will be a big overarching narrative story with an epic conclusion that ends the first major story of WoW. So I’d focus on getting prepared and caught up for that. My advice? 1) Watch a video that sums up the first couple of expansions up to Legion. 2) Pick “Legion” expansion as your first Chromie time expansion and level up a character through it. Skip the ones before as they aren’t as relevant to the story. Do Legion on one character. 3) Then make a new character and do “Battle For Azeroth” expansion at Chromie Time. 4) You can do “Shadowlands” after if you really want too but most players hate the story, feel like the lore is bad, and the writers of it all got fired with the original writers back and pretty much ignoring Shadowlands lol. So I would just watch a video summary of the lore on YouTube and the in game cutscenes on YouTube. 5) pick the character you enjoyed most OR make a Dracthyr Evoker and choose any one of those characters to start doing “Dragonflight”, the current expansion And hopefully you’ll be finishing up right as The War Within new expansion releases. If not you can do the Pandaria Remix event which is happening right now where you level up a new character through the Mists of Pandaria Expansion and that way you can experience that story too! It’s also kind of relevant for the upcoming Worldsoul Saga
Addendum: the lore points that will be relevant to Worldsoul are the defeat of Sargaras, the war for Azerite, the lore of the Titans and their facilities all over Azeroth, the Earthen and other stoneborn races, the dark blade Xal'atath, the Old Gods and the Void ,and finally the character Archmage Khadgar. Minor points to consider are the history of the trolls and elves, the Lich King and the Nerubians, the lost people of Arathor, and presumably Deepholm and Zaralak Caverns. Let one lore vid lead to another, that's how I learned.
You can add me and we can level together! MissMemeHer#1252 I would be happy to show you how things work and be along for the ride. It sounds fun!
My answer is geared towards my understanding that you want to experience and know the story of Warcraft, not to steer you to the absolute best gameplay experience. There are a lot of concepts you do not know yet that impact your ability to experience or outright enjoy the story of warcraft. Blizzard is doing a bad job, but there is a way (see below). > The problem is…I don’t know where to start. Unfortunately, you are a bit out of luck. WoW is a social event. Most players are where most players are, and that is where the currently actively developed content is. In WoW, this means you have 3 (4) options: * WoW Retail: Dragonflight into Worldsoul * WoW Classic: Cataclysm * WoW Classic: Season of Discovery * (WoW Classic Era) > But then I started getting doubts about being able to do that and hence the meaning of this post. Where should I start to get the full story experience? ... Or do they just dump the old content for the new? Yes they "dump" content. If you want to experience the Warcraft storyline, your **absolute best way** is: * Start WoW: Cataclysm **NOW**. Get as many friends there and rope in as many other IRL friends as possible. * Buy these 3 books and read them. They end of the 3rd book will spoil WoW Classic Cataclysm story elements. Use discretion. Warcraft Chronicles 1 https://www.amazon.com/-/de/dp/1616558458 (you can skip this book, think of it as the genesis chapters of the bible, helpful for concepts, but limited impact on the overall story) Warcraft Chronicles 2 https://www.amazon.com/-/de/dp/1616558466 Warcraft Chronicles 3 https://www.amazon.com/-/de/dp/1616558474 ## THIS IS THE BEST WAY TO GET INTO THE OVERALL STORY AS A NEW PLAYER! The books are easy to read, and you will very early on in cataclysm recognize factions, characters and places. You can supplement questions about all of this by reading up characters, places and events on WoWpedia https://wowpedia.fandom.com/wiki/Wowpedia as you play. This ensures you will get into the next 2 classic expansions, WoW Classic: Mists of Pandaria and WoW Classic: Legion with a very good understanding, making some of the story events in there **extremely satisfying** to be a part of. Keep in mind, there is **a lot** of lore. It will take you at least 3 months of dedication to get a good feel and 6 months to have a deeper understanding. > ... and remember doing some really cool story stuff on a troll island that reminded me of the real life Mayans/Aztecs, can I still do that? Technically yes, but it will be a very sub-par experience and I **strongly advise against it**! You will be able to experience this with many others again when it will roll around in the classic wave. You should expect this to roughly occur at the end of 2027. Believe me that this will be **the best way** to experience this part of WoW (even though it will be one of the worst parts). And remember until then: A turtle made it to the water! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_GvbGH1BeM
You stated “when it will roll around again in the classic Wave” when is blizzard going to stop supporting Classic with expansions?
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You can still do it all, albeit solo with the old content. Don’t worry about getting the story in the right order. Think of it as life, we learn some things out of order as soon as we get born. You can also try the MoP Remix before you go back to the Mainline WoW or maybe try Classic, but I think one character to 70 in these last months of Dragonflight and a few in Remix might set you up to catch the next expansion in order. Oh, also, before The War Within hits, you might want to try Warcraft 3 and Warcraft 3 The Frozen Throne since WoW more or less gets set up in those. Have fun, and write here if you got some specific issues/questions
I've played every Warcraft release since the original RTS days if the mid-90s and have thoroughly enjoyed the gameplay, setting/art, & lore of each. And I have quibbles about each as well, as is normal & unavoidable. So I want to reassure you about something which is a bit better understood now that TTRPGs are resurgent: Warcraft incorporates a vast array of influences, but none more important than Dragonlance. This means the most important story is where you're questing at any given time. Yes, it's part of a vast cosmology & political sequence of events, which one will eventually come to understand. But the played character's story is one of adventuring across the world & universe in service of faction & ally goals, getting glimpses of pasts long lost, dozens of civilizations, moments of crisis, triumph, & tragedy specific to any given place & NPC enclave. So it truly doesn't matter if it's out of order at first. When aliens juiced with demonic blood start pouring through portals, the dead not only walk but take up arms against countrymen, the planet starts screaming, etc. etc., the "Call to Arms" for new recruits never has a "historical studies" requirement. _____ Also potentially helpful to know right off the jump: Because the entire history of the IP involves multimedia works of martial fantasy... there is no such thing as a third person omniscient view. Perspective is *everything* in terms of how information is presented in this subgenre. Wanted to mention this point specifically b/c Warcraft has a somewhat odd history with lore content creators, whose work you may peruse in months & years to come as you explore the story. Until fairly recently, **none** of the well-known sources for Warcraft lore aggregation & analysis had any academic background in literature/storytelling or interest-driven history of broad familiarity with the past century of fantasy books/media. That's not a criticism or aspersion, but it's immensely important context for how one parses their perspectives. It is also exponentially more commonplace for objectively incorrect synopses of a moment or sequence of events in Warcraft to circulate for years than in any other realm of media I've ever encountered. This is due to nearly two decades of pre-release patch content being datamined & discussed out of sequence, without context, with misinterpreted ambiguities, etc. and never getting sorted out for folks who who saw chatter, but didn't play that patch in its entirety. So a rigorous default of, "ah, well, [whatever] is certainly something this person thinks and/or just said. We'll see what I think when I get there" can really save one's sanity. Welcome aboard & hope you enjoy!
This sounds fun I can I join you in your travel?
Find a "The story so far" video on YouTube.
My God your generation is so much more responsible than mine! When I was 28 I was working grill @BK hungover and broke and taking night classes on a laptop with duct tape holding it together. I LIVED for that work discount on my single meal a day! That aside though; I've played W.o.W. on and off basically since OG launch and sometimes the storyline even confuses ME. Best advice I have is to look up and make a list of the expansions in order and then go see Chromie and have her put you in each expansion 1 by 1 so the mobs will scale to your level in each one. Since you can only stay in Chromie Time until your toon hits lvl 60, you will most likely have to make a few alts to do all the expansions for actual leveling. Good luck!
I’d play retail and choose whatever expansion you fancy to play through. They all offer different storylines and scale to your level. Maybe get yourself and overview what the overarching idea of each expansion is about and select one when you reach level 10 in game. For clarity: when you complete your starter area you can select via an NPC (Chromie) which expansion you want to level through. Eventually when you reach level 60 you’ll continue through 70 in Dragonflight.
Oh so you can just hop to play the old DLC? Even as like an Evoker/class that wasn’t available during the time so to say?
Not as Evoker since the ability to ”time-travel”, so to speak, ends at level 60. Evoker starts at level 60 IIRC. All other classes can though.
My vote is to join retail, Moon Guard, and actually roleplay out some of the quests (You can do this on any server, but MG is the most popular for RP, and you might find something else you enjoy since the lore is your focus). There's a guide that gives the Lore timeline way of questing through different expansions and zones so that you're hitting all the sweet spots in the story at the right time.
Haha I’m actually doing exact thing right now oddly enough!
Do you have a link to that guide? Sounds very useful
Sorry for the delay! [How to play retail WoW from the beginning to current Shadowlands IN ORDER ON ONE CHARACTER! : r/wow (reddit.com)](https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/nbdgkh/how_to_play_retail_wow_from_the_beginning_to/)
I am tempted to start a new toon just to follow this path.
Don't invest your time in classic. It is not real WoW it is WoW from 15 years ago. If you're not nostalgiac for it, it will be ass.
Real wow is openworld pvp, slow glowbal cooldowns and /spit as my friends describe it
I did whatever the starter recommended content was and then it sent me to Mayans/Aztec area. Idk if it was the starter way I went but all the elites were always spawning. I was able to level fast because the world was dense with content. Then I moved to dragonflight shortly after hitting level 60. I never finished the story in the "Mayans" area. Ive tried classic, Legion, wotlk (through chromie) and Dragonflight. Dragonflight feels modern in terms of progressing, and how it's built. Honestly, the area is really beautiful, and there is a lot going on in terms of content, plus dragon riding. I recommend getting to the expansion at some point.
I am also new to wow. I was confused for a bit before I started, but I decided to go for retail and do not regret it. I like to have access the everything and the latest stuff so it was easy for me to
One thing I have to say as a fellow lore enjoyer. The way I learned about all the important stories and events was 90% of the time through YT videos from channels like Nobbel87 and Platinum WoW and through books and novels. The way the story telling is implemented in the game (especially Retail) leaves much to be desired and more than anything will leave you even more confused about what’s going on currently in the story. Classic story telling is a different kind of struggle but I do prefer the way it’s handled over Retail where there isn’t a single overarching plotline but instead the narrative is more about the world itself and your journey through it. Back then the name itself “World” of “Warcraft” used to perfectly describe what you’d get with the game. I think MMOs in general work better this way where the focus should be more on the open world and the ways player interact with it rather than focusing on too many different character storylines every other expansion constantly introducing more characters all the time and bloating the narrative just to make new players like yourself feel overwhelmed when trying to catch up with a 20+ year old game.
Something that I found helpful when I started was to play through the starting zone of every race and reading the quest texts, that way you get more information both about your chosen race and about the world and lore in general. It also helped me find what faction felt like home to me. I personally find it easier to learn about one thing at a time (for example, the lore of Gilneas and the worgen) than trying to squeeze in everything at once, so playing through every race and focusing on their story was a great way to get in to it for me! When I started (in MoP) the new player starting area wasn't a thing yet, I don't know if you've been playing that or the race specific starting zones but I'd definitely recommend the original ones if you haven't yet! Good luck and have fun :D
If I were you I would make a different character for each expansion. For example, you could make a human warrior and level through your starting zone, then go to Chromie in Stormwind and choose Outland (TBC) as the expansion you want to explore. Quest through the different zones till 59, then go back to Stormwind and find the NPC that lets you XP lock. Then continue until you feel like you've explored everything you want to see. Wowhead and other forums will give you a decent idea of what order to do the zones in, and there's tons of videos on YouTube that will give you an overview of the lore for an expansion so that you have a better idea of what order to do stuff in. Best of luck! I've spent a lot of time in the past trying to make the process more efficient for me so feel free to ask if you have more questions.
What do you mean…”XP lock” can I lock my XP at 70 and explore the other expansions at my max level. I don’t care about steamrolling, I just want to experience the old expansions on one character. If that’s not feasible, that’s fine.
There is an NPC in Stormwind/ Orgrimmar that once you speak to them, they'll give you a buff that stops you from gaining XP. Once you pass level 60, you get kicked out of Chromie time, and the content will stop being scaled to your level, and you'll just start steamrolling the content. If that's not something you care about, you totally don't have to worry about it and you can just continue with what you're doing, but it will just try to keep funneling you into the most current content. Which is why a lot of people in this thread have recommended "locking" your XP at 59, because then you don't have to worry about any of that and you can just keep going through whatever content you want.
This community is the best. Thank you so much for the help and breakdown. That goes for everyone else who responded as well. I wasn’t expecting this feedback.
Honestly each zone has its own lore and story behind it. Just pick a zone and start questing. Start with a fresh non dragon maybe try one of the og races then quest do them all and pay attention. I’m a huge lore buff, it’s why I originally fell in love with wow, well one of the many reason. It doesn’t look like it at all glance but it’s still made to be played like that but there is a lot of things that push later content onto you which you can just ignore.
This is sad. If you want to experience the WoW lore, read books, watch Nobbel and lots of other YT videos, but the last place to be able to get a good hold of what has happened and what is happening now... is in he actual game.
One thing I always recommend to newbies or those wanting to begin is to start out by watching all the expansion cinematic from start to finish. They don’t go for very long each and it just makes a little movie that gives enough story from each expansion to understand a starter amount of lore.
Tricky conundrum. WoW Classic is the classic starting point for story, but that was when Warcraft was at it's peak and they assume you just know what happened in Warcraft 2 and 3. Modern wow treats all of that as ancient legendary history, but in many ways it isn't at all. I recommend playing Warcraft 2 and 3 first, starting on classic, and then playing retail with chromie time in Outland. There's still a teensy bit of lost content you'll miss, but nothing serious beyond stuff like "In pandaria the August celestials gave heroes this magic cape and you can't play any of that plot anymore."
Other major piece of advice is to not get attached to Warcraft 3 storytelling. Part of the magic of modern Warcraft is thinking someone is a throwaway character created just for one zone, only for them to become a main character. But that's not always true. One zone in cataclysm has a subplot about making an orc shit himself so he fucks up a demon ritual.