So, I had 2 friends that are very into epic-fantasy genre. They were really looking forward to experience WoW’s story.
But, they started to play the game and… Neither they nor i have any idea where to start. There is no “main questline” to follow, they have no idea what order they should follow and it almost feels like impossible to connect the dots between different events.
I suggested them some youtube channels but it discouraged them even further because it feels like spoiler to watch some of the videoes.
I am at a loss as to what I should say to them. Is there a website that put the questlines in WoW in order to get a decent understanding of the events happening on Azeroth?
Ehhm… best I can do is to give you the original order the expansions came in. But from their ‘coolness’ approach, they are very detached from each other, with callbacks being too few and far between.
So here goes:
Classic WoW/Vanilla
The Burning Crusade - Adventures in Outlands
The Wrath of the Lich King - Adventures in Northrend
The Cataclysm - Adventures in the new zones of standard Azeroth.
The Mists of Pandaria - Adventures in the lands of Pandaria
The Warlords of Draenor - Adventures into Draenor, according to - at first - chasing Garrosh Hellscream and the Iron Hrode.
The Legion - Adventures into the Broken Isles
The Battle for Azeroth - Says what it is on the tin. Bit of faction war, anyway.
New players start quests, by default, placed in expansion Battle for Azeroth, which is a prelude for events of Shadowlands. I am sure they also get a quest to go to Chromie to pick another timeline they want to quest or level at but when they pick different timeline, then story is pretty much related to that timeline - for example, Warlords of Draenor.
With World of WarCraft, no one is forcing you to get to level 60 as fast as possible. For example, players can do Legion and Battle for Azeroth class hall quests. They are not really leveling efficient because it can require of them to do certain dungeons, get certain levels/reputations but they do tell the “main story”.
If they want to do all quests because they just love to dive into lore, they can just go to Chromie for each of timelines and then order would be:
Burning Crusade
Wrath of the Lich King
Cataclysm
Mists of Pandaria
Warlords of Draenor
Legion
Battle for Azeroth.
However, they have option to read about WoW Lore a lot on internet. So they can skip that part, if their main goal is to get to level cap. I personally just tend to do all quests and follow up the lore on main character.
Would the quests of Burning Crusade naturally lead to events of Wrath of the Lich King? Or rather, let me say, would they by reading the texts understand that events in BC quests are leading to WOTLK? If so this could help alot to them and create this feeling of continuity.
They are not really keen to reading / watching stuff that much because random informations pop alot from here and there, spoiling so many things.
Well, thing is - Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King are first 2 expansion to WoW game and they are literally wrapping up the stories from WarCraft 3 Reign of Chaos and The Frozen Throne (which is pretty much WarCraft 3 Reforged).
So, there is no really a follow up that makes some logical sense why all of sudden you are turning from Outland to Northrend.
At that time, lorewise, we “knew” that Illidan, Vashj, Kael’thas and Arthas were alive and where they reside.
So, I will just sum up things, first you would venture into Outland and when you defeated Illidan, events of Wrath of the Lich king started. Which basically means that Lich King was gathering forces while you were in Outland, to unleash them upon Azeroth and destroy it.
But I think that context/event is lost and I think you just get a quest that pops up as follow up where you report to Stormwind and then you just go to Northrend.
Starting quests for every expansion did not change. It’s just that those events during pre-patch are exclusive which you get to experience once in life time (for now).
That was my initial suggestion but they didn’t really like it. Not due to Nobbel’s narration or anything. Their original plan was to play an MMORPG with a decent storyline and experience it together (they are a couple) through the game.
Well I think they are gonna pick GW2. They just asked me if WoW could be a better choice but they are, as i stated in the main comment, way too confused as to how they are gonna experience the story in WoW through quests.
To be frank now I am wondering if such a thing is possible at all.
From what they told me GW2 has this main quest line and repeatable events in maps that are related to storyline, which obviously makes it easier to them to experience the storyline together.
They could just go from new starting zone to Kul Tiras/Zandalar. Focus on zone specifc quests which are neat self-contained stories that dont require almost any knowledge of other lore - tell them to mostly ignore quests they get on the boat and just do zone specifc quest chains (they are highlights in q.journal). Once they reach 58 they should either finish up any quest chains they want and/or rush to SW or Org to start Shadowlands.
Bolvar will fill them in on everything they need to know. From there it’s all straight forward.
They dont need to know 15 years of WoW history to enjoy SL.
Play classic, then come back and use chromie time to level a bunch of alts through the other expansions.
And spend a few hundred on books and comics, because half the actual lore that matters isn’t in the game.
To be fair, I don’t think GW2 does a very good job explaining its lore either. I remember when I tried to get into it a friend started giving me a bunch of lore videos to watch. There was so much in those videos that I did not learn in the game whatsoever. Also, the “mists” is a pretty big thing in GW2. In the Asura capital city there are two “mists warriors” who are talking about recruiting for the “mist wars”. I interacted with them. It went something like this:
Mists warriors greets me.
I ask: what is the mist wars?
They reply: it’s a war going on in the mists.
Whoever wrote that particular line of dialogue either didn’t know much about the world building either, or the world building isn’t very deep. Either way, if you want to understand the story of GW2 and its world you’ll have to rely on the internet because the game won’t tell you.
Or just, you know… stay in Classic. I started playing WoW when TBC was released and I had little to no knowledge about the story and the world, and yet I was completely engrossed by the game world and I learned enough about the story by simply reading the quests. So that would be my recommendation.
problem is that between vanilla to cataclysm there realy is no red line to follow at all, they are totaly different stories, maby some hints here and there but thats about it.
the storie start to connect from expansion to expansion from mop to Shadowlands, better, though again to experience hole story you have to play both horde and alliance, or you gona be totaly confues again.
I can recommend the Addon “BTW Quest”. It has quest chains sorted by addons and requirements. So you can pretty easily start with classic and go thru all expansions.
Hmm, early on WoW wasn’t really about a coherent narrative. That didn’t come until Wrath of the Lich King. Certain storylines did take place beforehand, but it was a mess and very large portions got retconned or recontextualised to a large degree. After Wrath of the Lich King it begins transitioning into loosely connected serialised story, where it technically follows the previous one, but is it’s own thing so best thing about it like a series of loosely connected “short” stories. As far as lore itself goes the best overvew is still Warcraft Chronicles series, even tho it has been reduced to a perspective piece sicne it’s conception.