Hey everyone. I’m only just starting but i’m curious as to the best way to stay in touch with the story. I know the game puts you into BFA but once I hit 50, should I play every expansion starting from the very first one through Chromie? I’m worried it’s going to feel a bit disheartening going through 16 years of content when you’re already max level. Is it better to make new characters for each expansion perhaps?
Thanks in advance for any advice.
Welcome to Azeroth.
The story is huge, sprawling, and crazy!
For a start, I recommend you check out the overall Timeline of the Warcraft universe to understand where everything fits:
and here’s a YouTube summary of the relevant bits
OK, that’s the background and outline of the overall story.
In Timeline, WoW started at Year 25:
but the proximate history that is much referred to happened in the earlier Warcraft games starting from about Year 4.
World of Warcraft itself happens in Years 25 through 34, with a side excursion into an Alternate Universe Draenor in expansion Warlords of Draenor.
As an added complication, when you start WoW, you are in Year 28, Cataclysm, and will be “going back” in time to The Burning Crusade and Wrath Years for their own expansions. (Don’t ask, please!)
Much of the story not covered in the game itself is also told in the Warcraft novels:
Each expansion roughly covers a year.
In each expansion, each Zone has its own story and characters, with some major characters recurring. Each expansion also has its own “End-game” story, which was played out in dungeons and raids when players reached the max level for that expansion.
When levelling, you will not find groups to do the raids of each expansion. You can, however, complete those raids on a level 50 or 60 character now by walking in and doing them solo.
There are further story and time-warping complications, but that is the outline.
So to answer your question:
YES! If you want to see the whole story of WoW it is better to make one character for each expansion.
Make your first character and put it through BfA, since you have no choice, to level 50. That level 50 can continue on through Shadowlands to level 60, and you can use it to see the older expansions’ dungeons and raids.
Then make other characters, one per expansion. This will give you an opportunity to try multiple classes and races. Once you can make your second and subsequent characters that don’t have to go through the tutorial Exiles’ Reach, I suggest you do: start each race in its own zone, where you will lern where that race is coming from.
So I suggest:
a character for Cataclysm first, since the original zones are now included with Cataclysm.
and then one character for each of the other expansions.
Before you commit to any, PICK YOUR REALM(S) CAREFULLY!!
You may want to make both Alliance and Horde characters, to see the story from both sides. Your Alliance characters can “help each other”, by mailing each other professions materials and gold, but cannot communicate with your Horde characters, even if on the same realm. There is one exception: some items like Heirloom armour is “Bind on Account”, which can be sent to any character of yours even across realms.
So I would recommend you have your Alliance and your Horde characters on different realms, unless you are specifically doing RolePlay.
Which realms? Here are the essential rules:
https://eu.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/
Here is a site where you can gauge roughly the Alliance:Horde size and ratio for end-game purposes
https://www.wowrealmpopulation.com/wow-eu-realms-population-alliance.php
https://www.wowrealmpopulation.com/wow-eu-realms-population-horde.php
You can sort by Alliance pop or Horde pop.
Hello!
Im Azuolas’s friend (who got him back into the game hehe~)
He send me to relay this message: “This dum dum deleted his reply and now he can’t post a new one, he feels really bad about not being able to thank you and wanted me to let you know he’s super grateful and that your reply was wonderful, exactly what he needed” And Im also very thankful, I was never able to fully understand the story and its timeline, so this is new for me too! Again, thank you so much from two new WoW players!
Really great post!
Thank you, Maieve, and please thank Azuolas as well. 
Azuolas should be able to post again now that there are other replies, so please either of you ask any follow-up questions you many have!
I’m actually speechless. This should honestly be stickied for every new player to read, I have everything layed out about how to approach the story now when yesterday I was totally confused. Thank you 
Thank you! It now all makes sense. I am a returning player and I didn’t know left from right.
For my first character I wanted to do alchemy, couldn’t understand why when I made a potion I had to be level 45 to drink it.
Ah, that.
Until a few weeks ago, the expansions were pretty much in level order. You had to be level 90 to start Draenor, for example. Now the levels are all higgledy-piggledy, but the items that we use, like potions, haven’t been entirely updated accordingly. It’s very confusing - even more for me than for you, because I see something like that and feel that it’s just very wrong. It goes against everything I have learned the game to be about over many years.
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