Looking for Lore advise and such

Moonglade / Steamwheedle Cartel / The Sha'tar
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I’m new to WoW and RPing in Wow, I don’t really know much of the lore and I’m unsure where to go to find it apart from trying to make sense of the internet posts. I used a boost for this character, only know about the burning of Teldrassil through online trailers and talking with other RPers, and I’ve just started a Horde character. So I’d like any help with getting a handle of the lore and such.

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Nobbel87 on Youtube has hundreds (no, really, it’s nearly 300 videos at this point) of lore videos. It’s A LOT of content, so I imagine the easiest way would be to google “Nobbel87 Lore of Warcraft - Chronological” and start watching from the very first one! He also has a video called “The Story of Warcraft - Full Version [Lore]” which vaguely describes the events up until Mists of Pandaria.

Of course there’s always Wowpedia. I’d suggest reading the articles there, especially the ones on different races since these usually include a good chunk of history.

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You are doing so remarkably well, when you are so new to both WoW and roleplay :slight_smile: It is a pleasure to interact with Inkeri. :revolving_hearts:

I have played World of Warcraft, almost since the beginning, but roleplay is still new territory to me.

As Linaria says, Nobbel is almost the -go-to-guy for lore. Although I personally can find it a little hard to always understand, what he is saying, and sometimes he just speaks too fast for my liking!

What I would recommend is, that you cherrypick a little. Select what you find interesting and start from there.There is so much lore to digest, that one can easily feel a tad overwhelmed.

Like, say, you are planning an event that takes place in Feralas, for example. Then dive into lore surrounding that specific area, use wowpedia to investigate about the story of the place, which creatures live there, fun facts. and so forth. Even if you end up not really “needing” it, I find it awesome to expand my knowledge!

It makes it a joy to go through, at least for me; the World of Warcraft becomes so alive, and because I can “put it to good use”, it also helps remembering it. If that makes sense? :slight_smile: But start where your passion lies. I find it very helpful to find inspiration from my real world too, and do not limit my search to just the game.

It depends which kind of person you are, of course; I like both to read novels and books on the lore, as well as watch videos. I am a fan of Inquisitor Aura on Youtube.

If you fly through an area in game, and you suddenly think “Hey, what is this about” - chances are, there is a video on that specific area on Youtube too.

As for the Burning of Teldrassil - and so many other events that took place in the game - it is very sad, that latecomers cannot experience it.

I highly recommend reading the novella “Elegy”. It is found online as digital and free download. It gives you such a great insight into what took place. (Better than the game presented it) There is also the novella “A Good War” telling the same tale, but from the Horde perspective.

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Nobbel and Inquisitor Aura are great, and Doronsmovies is also a good YouTube source for WoW lore and how to roleplay.

If you like reading, the World of Warcraft Chronicles might be a good read. I think there are 3 of them now (Volume 1, 2, and 3). They’re kind of semi-chronological “encyclopedias” / history books about the Warcraft universe. I think the aforementioned youtubers get much of their information from there (and also from the official Warcraft novels out there).

I use WoWpedia and WoWwiki a lot as well, when searching for specific information about, for example, Elwynn Forest, or Karazhan.

For gameplay help, I find WoWhead very useful, if I’m having trouble with a quest, or need information about items in the game, like ingredients or armor.

Also, if you just ask in the LookingForRP chat, there might well be someone who knows the answer you seek :slight_smile:

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For the recent stuff I’d recommend reading A Good War and Elegy, as without them the whole War of Thorns really falls apart. Past that, just playing the game should give you the basic stuff you need, especially if you already play both sides. For more obscure things I recommend the wowhead summaries for recent storylines, they tend to be pretty concise and clear.

For older things, if you’re like me and can’t listen to videos for too long if they’re lore-related, I’ll second Alunaria. I’d honestly just recommend going topic by topic on wowpedia. WoW lore is a very, very big place, getting the lore books legitimately is expensive and there’s no way to know ahead of time what you’ll like, so I’d suggest just starting off small. If you’re playing a pandaren, look into the Wandering Isle there, from there Pandaria, from there the races involved, the Shaohao vids and so on. And before you know it you’ll have stumbled on something else you enjoy.

Good luck and cheers!

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For new players who want to know the story, I always recommend taking their time leveling. True, we often don’t finish storylines and just hop on to the next continent, but a new player wouldn’t even know if they’re overstaying the zone/continent, so they’re more likely to keep going in a (gameplay-wise) suboptimal fashion - and end up learning more about the world.

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Reading A Good War and Elegy was a real punch to the gut, I have no idea what to think about all of that. It was terrible, but its about war, and war is always terrible.

From what I read, Sylvanas didn’t go with the intend to burn the World Tree, she had been aiming for Malfurion. If Saurfang had killed him like she had told him, she wouldn’t have burn the tree. But I don’t understand why she went to war, yes the peace was fragile, but both sides were recovering from war, a war they had fought together.

But then I remembered that Genn, even in the midst of fighting against the Legion, attempted to kill her despite the fact the Legion of demons attempting to destroy their world should have been his first concern.

And I remember how the Alliance believed that the Horde quit the battle-field for nothing, that they went back on their world when they were first fighting against the Legion, when really they were falling back because their Warchief had been mortally wounded.

And I can understand why the Horde went to war, I can understand Saurfang’s plan to hold Darnassus as a hostage.

The peace they had was not going to last, but it could have lasted longer, it could have been worked on without war.

But I understand why they first thought of a war, the Horde formed under Thrall has been fighting for their right to live and survive since it was formed. After fighting so long for their right to live, how could they think of another way when their history showed that peace wouldn’t last? That their right to live and survive would not be acknowledged? When they had to fight for so long?

The burning of Teldrassil has damned them, even if Sylvanas was overthrown, I don’t know if the Alliance will be able to let what happened go. Not when so many innocent people were killed, not when so much culture and history was destroyed, not when they have an orphan child to raise as the face of what happened, branded as the last child of Teldrassil.

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One thing I await with anticipation is the story going forward. We are being kept in the dark; there is more to it, more to the motivation and reasons behind the acts, than what we are being told right now.

I am curious to see, how all the loose ends will be tied up.

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Indeed! It reminds me of our discussion in wake of Vonessen’s rewrite of the lyrics to the ‘Daughter of the Sea’:

'Through the darkness of future’s past,
the Banshee longs to see.
One chants out between old worlds,
N’Zoth walk with me!’ :squid:

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I suppose her logic was; if we are 100% sure the Alliance WILL attack the Horde at some point in the near future, it is plain stupid not to attack first…

I still think she is a cold, heartless, cynical and egotistic beeotch, though.

I believe the defeat of Sargeras and his puppet Gul’dan, left a void (no pun intended, to the Ren’dorei out there), and a war definitely keeps people busy, no matter if you’re a frontline fighter, craftsman, or civilian.

It’s been a while since I read A Good War Elegy, but it seemed to me Sylvanas was enacting “to secure peace is to prepare for war” (or, rather, just flat out declare/wage war)…

Besides, if she had “just” killed Malfurion, I would have been …upset… with her.
I am sure much of the Alliance would.

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My best tip is to have two computer screens.
I have been playing wow since vanilla, but I’ve been away a bit, I didn’t play warcraft 1-3 and I have the attention span of a goldfish, so I don’t know stuff… any stuff, really.

So, when I RP I usually have wowpedia or something up at my second computer screen.

So it’s kindof like this:

Someone: “Have you been to Zandalar?”
Me: “What? Why?”
----google “Zandalar” on the other screen—
Someone: “Oh, I was just thinking of going there.”
Me: “I haven’t been much in the South seas really. Also I hear there’s some nasty trolls there. Sounds dangerous. Are you thinking about going alone?”

Also, remember that you don’t actually HAVE to know everything, unless you are roleplaying as the greatest scholar who ever lived. It’s ok to not know stuff. :slight_smile:

xoxo
//Kitten

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That is very good advice!

(Both looking stuff up, and deciding that maybe your character has a “lore-friendly” reason to not know some things.)

I only have one screen, but a smartphone and/or tablet serves a similar purpose :slight_smile:

Being a big ol’ nurd, I have a google spreadsheet with my character & family info, + some very abbreviated lore points that I seem completely unable to remember.

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Actually I think the advice that your character doesn’t have to know eveything is great. It’s perfectly reasonable that a person won’t know everything about the world, or it’s history, especially since there’s no way to easily access all that information.
Some characters have a good reason to know a lot, and a lot of character have a good reason to know significantly less.

What information/knowledge matters to your character? You can focus on that.

But of course there’s no reason not to immerse yourself in all the lore for your own enjoyment! Just don’t let it scare you away, you can RP without a lot of it.

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I realize, I belong to a minority here, and I have considered getting two monitors for a while, but I tend to sacrifice knowledge-on-the-spot for immersion. All that flipping back and forth from WoW and to Windows and googling around just isn´t for me, when I am roleplaying. I usually do not run WoW in Windows mode either, just to keep myself from being tempted, hah. :yum:

But I totally understand, that the lore of WoW and questions during roleplay sometimes can awake the need of looking things up! I just note things down to look up later.

If you find yourself in a situation, where you feel as if certain knowledge is needed, you can always try to “act around it”, and have your answer be postponed/change the direction of the conversation. It could even leave room for more ongoing roleplay later on this way. If that makes sense :butterfly:

Or, simply have your character know less, as has been suggested, that is also great advice :slight_smile:

It could even be done in a quirky sort of way like:

“No, I do not know of this orc that you mention, but did you know, that a single cloud can weigh more than 1 million pounds?”

Ok, that was a terrible example, but I hope you get my point! :cloud_with_rain:

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And thus I find myself amazed by clouds… :smile:

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You shouldn’t know everything. But there are some things you absolutely should know.

If you’re a human, you probably know the seven kingdoms from name at least. Think about it. I assume a good deal of people reading this are British or Irish (since this is an English speaking forum). You probably know (more or less) where France and Germany and Poland are. So a Gilnean probably knows Alterac and heard about the famous shipyards of Stratholme as much as we hear about Venice.

We all heard about World War 1 and World War 2. So your average person who isn’t a total uneducated peasant probably heard about the three major wars, the War of the Ancients (even if they don’t know much about it) and know there’s a major war going on right now - just like we knew about the events in Syria recently.

Yeah, Azeroth is not an information age society. But its magic is so powerful and ubiquitous, it might as well be.

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