Would love to create an alt that would be guided through WoW starting from Vanilla. No need to go through all the “side missions”, but campaign missions. I realize that some significant adjustments regarding exp gain would have to be made, but this is the mode I’ve always wanted during my 1-2 years of playing. I remember when I first joined, the Newcomer chat was full of players who wanted to play the full story - and everyone was ready to invest time on it. It’s a shame you’ve got to figure your own way around if you want to play the full story.
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It’s kinda what I’m doing now. I’m going through burning crusade and will go up from there. The main issue I have is that I don’t know what are the important quests and what are just filler ones. It’s all over the place.
Currently they send new players to bfa which is not that great for someone that is not familiar with the universe of wow and you can’t even finish it because the game interrupts it in the middle of the campaign to send you in shadowlands fighting along side thrall and co which you have no idea who they are.
What blizz should have done is distill the story quests from all expansions from beginning to the end and send that new player all around the world so they understand what’s going on. Burning crusade for example has like 80% pointless quests. Just choose some of the most important ones up to illidan and then go to wotlk and so on.
Currently I don’t see how a new player can fall in love with this game if they care about lore.
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Unfortunately there isn’t really a “full story”…
The world has a story, but even in vanilla you were just an adventurer, not necessarily privy to wider events etc.
I think going forward beyond Dragonflight that’s going to change, but for now for old content there isn’t really a coherent story, especially because most of the post-leveling narrative is usually told through raids.
It’s the worst, you get given no concept as to who you are other than “you are a soldier of X faction”.
It’s why with Dragonflight I feel they can’t afford to wait till 11.0 to make it so people can level from level 10 in the Dragon Isles, that content is what would pull new blood in, not BFA. BFA’s more likely to convince them not to play.
Had the same problem myself. I wish there was some sort of a guide for campaign quests
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I actually regret not playing TBC when it was out. The plot seems awesome, the zones are really cool, I imagine it must have felt quite cool questing when the TBC storyline was relevant.
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A balance needs to be struck between free-range exploration to discover the details around the story and questing on rails where there is one path and every quest leads to another quest in the main story.
Vanilla, TBC and Wrath were very free range, especially Vanilla. When I started playing in 2005 I knew nothing about the main lore figures and there was no story really while leveling. As an orc I just wandered the Barrens like Kane from Kung Fu.
BFA and SL had main campaigns that led you through it all. BFA had only one choice - which order you did the three zones in. You still had to do them all.
MOP had a good balance between free range exploration and a coherent story arc.
As for a single coherent story for the whole of WoW, this would be almost impossible as there is just so much of it.
I can see that an Add-On (a bit like those that guide you on the fastest way to level via the quickest questing routes) could be done to create coherent storylines. You could have a Dwarf storyline starting in Dun Morough then going to Loch Modan, Wetlands, Searing Gorge, Twillight Highlands and then finding Dwarf stories in the other expansions. You could have a Burning Legion story with lots of Outland, Draenor and Legion questlines.
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Campaigns are a really new thing. Vanilla had no overarching story. Legion didn’t even have a campaign while levelling.
Did you play ‘classic tbc’?
i wouldnt say its the worst.
imagine if u played MoP. Killed garrosh got 50 and then ended in the Shadowlands with Slyvanus suddenly against you really.
BFA has all the lead up events to how SL occured really, so its the best one to pick if ur going to put a new player into a Expansion.
You never get to finish it though. It sent me to shadowlands while I was still doing the quests on the 3rd zone. I still don’t know what bfa was all about till I go back one day.
Except They’re pulled out of it with no context.
They don’t know anything about the race/faction they’ve picked, they don’t know about any of the characters they’re about to be thrown into the concept-lands with, SL is parasitic, it relies on the player already having quite a knowledge of the Warcraft universe, and then damages that narrative context.
It’s a problem with literally all of Wow’s content, because the narrative it tries to tell relies so heavily on raid content, raid content that’s inaccessible while you’re leveling in that expansion.
However BFA’s even worse purely because it’s dungeons are quite possibly the worst dungeons they could try to put a new player through.
The general idea of “the game starts at endgame” needs to die.
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I’ve tried it on a few characters both on horde and alliance and it feels like just joining a story in the middle of everything, plus you don’t get to finish the story nor get very far with it if you don’t disable exp.
New players don’t want someone else to “force pick” the right expansion for us, sure you can recommend and explain why, but an optional way to start all the way from Vanilla - even if there wasn’t a complete “campaign” - would still be something I’d prefer, just to explore all the expansions before the newest ones. 
Its defintly not ideal, i can agree there, and yeah being restricted to a singular choice isnt great either.
Just ment theres worse expansions to put players through
Ironically imho for SL the best expansion to put new players in would be WoTLK.
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Out of curiosity, is it possible to play through BFA at level 60? With all the cutscenes and so on?
Yes, it is possible.
You can still play TBC. Outlands is practically unchanged in its gameplay and quests.
It isnt as awesome as you think it is though. Overall, TBC was a pretty random thrown together thing. Keal going crazy, Vashj plotting…something? (For real, what DID she wanted to do with all the water?). Illidan …well, is Illidan.
Vanilla never had a campaign. Most vanilla zones also got reworked and new quests during Cata. There is also things that happen you don’t see ingame…thinking of the Sylvanas book or game video’s that came out.
I have tried it, but the process of leveling a Classic character is just not something I have time for at the moment. But I realise that the option to experience TBC as it was back in the day is available, so my “complaint” about missing TBC doesnt make sense.
She who controls water controls life.
I’ve been pondering this.
I’d love a more linear main story for WoW going forward for first time leveling, with a sandbox of content for leveling alts.
But I simply don’t think Danuser has the passion or vision or ambition to deliver something like that.
Whenever he discusses Warcraft, it never feels sincere, it never feels like a labour of love for the world or the IP.
The recent mentions of the Dragonflight timeskip felt completely and utterly hollow, something he’d only thought about after it had already been mentioned in the Dragonflight alpha.
The nature of MMO’s ever vertical expansion means that there’s a genuine opportunity to deliver an authentic story telling experience in a way other video game genre’s simply can’t, I’d say MMO’s are capable of achieving book levels of narrative depth, where single player games and movies and TV shows simply can’t.
MMO’s can afford to take things slow, give you the small moments, give you the relaxed moments, build tension over time, because it’s ever expanding.
But Danuser simply doesn’t have the vision or passion or even say skills to do something like that, in order to tell a meaningful story in a way MMO’s have the potential to, you need to understand human psychology, you need to know your choice of words for a certain character will make people feel a certain way.
This is also not entirely Danuser’s fault, Ion’s a system’s designer, he’s a raid guy, he shouldn’t be lead director of a whole video game project where you’re trying to immerse players in a meaningful story.
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