Need advice on how to experience as much of the story as possible

Lore Story
1

Hey everyone,

I’m a new-ish player and have been a little overwhelmed with the 14+ years of in-game lore that I need to catch up on.

When I levelled my rogue, I barely knew what was happening in an expansion before being whisked off to another and all the characters have changed and and I didn’t know what the hell was going on.

On my demon hunter, playing through Legion felt right because I’d been on ice for all those years and I actually took the time to play through most of the expac’s content because I was trying to unlock allied races.

Now that I’m max level and can solo past raids, I want to go back and start at TBC and play through the expansions as close to how it was when they were current content (except with god-like power).

It’s not quite that simple for a number of reasons:

First, some content has been removed completely from the game so I’ll have to see it on Youtube. An example of this that I know about is a quest after the plague cutscene at the end of Dragonblight in WOTLK. Are there any more glaring examples like this that I need to take into consideration?

Second, The pre-lanuch events that have been removed make the transition to new expansions jarring. I still don’t know why The Horde and The Alliance are at each other’s throats in BfA exactly. I know the War of Thorns happened and Teldrassil and all that but I don’t actually see it in game. It all just kicks of with The Battle of Lordaeron.

In Legion, there is a woman you can talk to that lets you play through scenarios where Khadgar explains the Legion threat and the pillars of creation. Is there anyway to do any of this in order so I can play through it before Dalaran is moved to the Broken Isles? It’s so backwards.

Pandaria, just seems to start and doesn’t require any backstory but when I started Draenor the first time I had NO idea what was going on. Is there a quest that explains who the Iron Horde are or why they’re invading. The first quest is fun but I needed more back story. Does it exist at the end of Cata?

Lastly, I realise that a lot of the major players have been around since before WoW and were introduced in WC3 or earlier. Do the later expansions do a good enough job of reintroducing them that I won’t miss not having played another game or read a book/comic? I know that you can play through the Culling of Straholme as a dungeon for instance.

Basically I’m looking to get as much of the background lore as I can from actually playing the game and not reading wiki articles but I don’t know what to focus on, what order I should go through the zones and what I’m missing because it was removed or happened outside of WOW.

Any advice would be appreciated.

2

Read the Chronicles, then read about the topics from the Chronicles which interest you. That way, you can flesh it out yourself.

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Like I said, I’d prefer to play through the story than read about it if possible.

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That’s a problem then, most of the Lore is covered by the books and the world was revamped several times. Do you have certain periods in time which particularly interest you? Would you play a Horde or an Alliance character?

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WoW itself is a mess if it comes to lore. A lot of the story is told in-between expansions and patches, as we can see cleary in MoP for example, which had a lot of novels (such as Tides of War, which told the story of Garrosh bombing Theramore, Shadows of the Horde, War Crimes, etc.) to bridge the gap between the patches and the expansions.

Like Araphant says, the Chronicles are a great start, they’ll cost you around 90 euros I think? If you want a cheaper option, Wowpedia is usually up to date with the lore (and is often cited here), and they have an unofficial timeline which might help you on the right track: https://wow.gamepedia.com/Timeline_(unofficial)

You already know a bit what happened in-game, studying a timeline will put that into perspective. But you’ve missed a lot too. You mentioned Draenor, for example, and you can only know what is happening there if you read War Crimes and some other background stuff on how Garrosh escaped to Draenor, and how he meets with his supposedly dead father in a supposedly destroyed world, etc.

To sum that up:

  • Use a timeline, e.g. the one I linked.
  • If you can afford it, and also want it, the three Chronicles.
  • Read up on stuff with the novels (https://wow.gamepedia.com/Novels), most of us learned about the lore through them.

And, like you said, Warcraft III - it’s almost essential to play that. You can cheat your way through it if you don’t want to spend too much time playing it, I did that too, but what happens there is absolutely essential to what is happening today. Blizzard is going to release a remastered version this summer, you can also wait for that.

That’s going to be impossible, only small segments are covered in-game, and for expansions such as Legion you need to level multiple classes.

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My current main is Horde but I plan on playing both sides to see everything. I’m not against reading but there’s so much content to play through and I’d rather do that and then fill in the gaps in my knowledge.

I’m playing though TBC right now and I’m looking forward to finding out more about Illidan obviously because I’m a DH but I know he was introduced as a character before WOW. I’m wondering if TBC goes back over that.

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Ok, start with Eversong Woods and Ghostlands. Then do the Heritage armor quest once exalted with Silvermoon. Start in Hellfire Peninsula, do the Outland stories, Illidan is prominent in Shadowmoon Valley mostly.

After that, you go Northrend. Cataclysm is a mixed bag, and very hard to catch, depends what part of the conflict interests you.

For Pandaria, you can do the zones and scenarios.

That’s as much of a battle plan as I can give you, for a blood elf and a demon hunter.

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If you want to know something about anything. I would advice you to visit Nobble on Youtube. He makes really good warfraft lore videos. His liberary isn’t complete yet but you can inform yourself to much stuff: https://www.youtube.com/user/Nobbel87

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OK so I’ll read summaries of those books but what about the pre-launch quests like in Legion where you can play it after you’re already in the Broken Isles? Do you know if it’s possible to do before hand?

I plan on playing the remaster when it comes out or might play it earlier, I don’t know yet.

Surely players who just played through the exapnsions have a basic grasp of what’s going on and who everyone is? I guess that’s all I’m asking for to start with. I just want to make sure I’m not missing anything or if something has been removed, then I know I have to go watch it on YT or read up on what happened.

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Sorry man, but that stuff gets removed from the game. Even questlines that are essential to the lore.

I know, it sucks, and I hate it too, but Blizzard can sometimes be… ugh, frustrating.

Not really (concerning players knowing what happened in between expansions). People were outraged when High Chieftain Cairne Bloodhoof was suddenly killed off screen and replaces by his son, Baine (currently leader of the Tauren).

As for removed stuff: Cataclysm removed some Old World (Kalimdor and EK) stuff, most questlines are still in the game, except a few (such as the Battle for the Undercity).

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The 3 big MMOs I played before WOW (FFXIV, ESO and SWTOR) all had amazing coherent stories you could play through in the right order and coming to WOW, it is so jarring.

I had so many false starts with this game because I just felt lost. I’m not sure what prompted me to really give it a go but after I did and found out that the lore was really deep, I kinda fell in love with the world.

I just wish the game was designed in a way that lets new players discover all this more organically than moving from one WTF? moment to the next before spending 30 minutes reading up on what everyone is talking about.

I basically had to force myself to become interested in the story after a couple of really good quests managed to peak my interest. It’s sad that so many new players must be put off because everything is backwards and/or incomplete.

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They had this philosophy about making content that is available only during the lifetime of that expansion.

That’s why they have removed things. If you didn’t experience them during their time you never will. Every expansion had unique and obtainable only then stuff that is no longer achievable.
It’s to preserve that “I’ve been there and lived that”.

But for the lore get the Chronicle books. They explain everything about the universe. For ingame zones and what is happening do the loremaster achievement( WC3 remastered(next winter) > Wow classic (next summer) BC > Wotlk > Cataclysm(remade all the vanilla zones and many quests have changed/replaced the original ones) > Pandaria > WOD > Legion > BFA).

If you want a more personal experience as a demon hunter you can go BC and straight to Legion(skip all the other) since your class hasn’t been part of the story.

And yes there will be lots of reading. Take your time and don’t rush it. Experience every quest and zone at your pace. Don’t do it for the sake of doing it or you will get burn out. Bring patience.

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You are absolutely right. WoW can be off-putting for new players because it’s pretty hard to get into, but once you’re in, you can’t get out again. xD

The lore is amazing, and there’s a lot to explore. Most of us have already accepted it as a basic fact that understanding the lore of WoW requires a lot of reading. It’s very odd that a game relies so heavily on outside sources, but that’s just how it is. I know I’d change it if I were in charge, but sadly…

What I love about WoW is reading up on the lore, and then seeing it for myself in-game. The War of the Ancients novels are about a war of ten thousand years ago, with the Night Elves against the invading Burning Legion who were accidentally summoned by the queen of the Night Elves, Azshara. It happened ten thousand years ago, so it isn’t in-game, but with the Well of Eternity dungeon, in which you go back to time, you can actually experience the final enormous battle before the world was literally torn apart, between the Burning Legion, the Kaldorei Resistance and the Dragonflights.

I get that you want to experience everything in-game, and Blizzard is currently trying to do so as much as they can with more cinematics, and more questlines.

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This is basically what I’m doing. My DH has every expansion before Legion untouched so I’m going back through all the content. I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t missing out on anything, but it looks like I’ll be missing out no matter what. I’ve already done a lot of reading for this game. I’m not adverse to it but I want to experience as much as possible for myself.

Question for anyone: Are the Dranei, the Naaru, the Titans, the Old Gods and the Etherials all introduced in this game or earlier?

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The draenei and the blood elves and their story has been introduced in warcraft 3. In the BC expansion they have been added to wow and expanded but the core is in the RTS.

Etherials have been added in Burning Crusade but there isn’t much described about them. They are this shady race of the void that nobody knows much about. Probably they will be better explained in the void expansion that will come eventually (most likely next expansion by the way things are going).

Old gods are better described by Chronicles than in game.

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Far, far, far earlier. The Ethereals already existed, but they were only introduced during The Burning Crusade.

The Naaru are the purest expressions of the Light, and as far as we know they’ve existed since the beginning of the cosmos.

The Old Gods are created by the Void Lords, and that also happened very early.

The Titans are actually planets that have woken up from a deep sleep (Azeroth is a Titan, and she is currently sleeping), and are now anthropomorphic beings. The first awoke very early as well.

So, all of them came to be in the earlier stages of the cosmos, far before anyone even knew Azeroth existed.

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I guess I should have asked “Do we first learn about them in this game?”, I’ve done a little reading and I know they’ve been around for aeons.

Because it’s relevant to this expansion, I still need to find out about all this because I missed so much the first time I levelled through to cap on my rogue. I still don’t know how Magni (??) became a diamond dwarf or why he can speak to Azeroth.

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In that case, the answer is yes.

The Draenei already existed a bit during Warcraft III, but we can neglect that since their lore got heavily retconned in the novel Rise of the Horde.

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Use this for accuracy. You have links and everything you need. It includes all the novels(probably you can find most of them for free on google nowadays). Comics are for free on the official site.

https:// www. mmo-champion . com/threads/2454167-Warcraft-Literature-Chronology-(Updated-for-Battle-for-Azeroth)

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‘Abandon hope all ye who enter here’

:joy: i kid i kid welcome to the world of “warcraft” lore :smile:

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