I’m a super new WoW player, and it is my first month playing the game! I’m in love with the game, as it brings me much joy to play. As we all know, there are many expansions out there, and since I was very confused about it I asked in newcomer chat what expansion should I play. Every single guide recommended me Dragonflight as the first expansions to play thru. I was not immiedietly sold on it, because I really wanted to learn all the lore avaiable in the game, and in chonology. But after some more talking, I’ve became convinced to play Dragonflight. I’ve been exploring Dragon Isles for some time now, doing every single quest I can, as I do not know Warcraft lore a lot. I’ve became engulfed in the world that surounded me and I was looking forward to play the rest of the expansions. In chapter 3, I hit level 71, and then the disaster stuck. I was no longer able to do companion dungeons, which was weird, so I travelled to Orgrimaar, to use Chromie. Unfortunetly I was not able to reverse this, and since I hit level 71 the game expects me to move on, and play the newest expansions, as everything is now capped at level 70 and below. That means ideally I should just abandon Dragonflight, pretty much in the middle of the story, and just do The War Within, without even knowing who Anduin (as I assume the main character of the story, cause I saw him in the cinematic) is. Dragonflight is at least capped at lvl 70 so enemies actually put up a fight, but in even older expansions, everything is capped at lvl 35, which means I can destroy everything in my path, without any proper or exciting combat. I’ve been really discouraged (after learning I’m basically blocked, I pretty much stopped playing), to play the game from this point onwards, as I really want to play WoW, but without knowing story I really don’t see the point. You don’t start watching a series from 11th part do you? Is there antyhing I can do, to enjoy the game whilst playing thru the story, and local quests myself?
There is SOOOOOO much to explain. I can’t possibly hope to do it all in one post. I’ll tell you about a few concepts.
Levels and Expansions
Each expansion covers a year or two in Azeroth time, with a couple of deviations, and each expansion was released and played on a two-year cycle.
Originally, characters levelled from 1-60 in Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms, and then 10 levels each expansion (except for Cata and Mists, which were 5 levels each for no reason that makes sense now, of it ever did). At level 120, the devs cut levels in half, so level 120 became level 50, and so on down the line.
When you overlevel an expansion by 5 levels, you get the “Legacy Buff”, which, as you have seen, makes you godlike to the NPCs there.
You can “lock your XP” at any level up below 70. When you do that, you don’t gain any more experience or levels. But not at 71. However, at 71, and then 72, you will gain very little XP in Dragonflight, so you should find that suitable until you finish it. When you do gett he Legacy Buff, you can walk into dungeons on your own without any help!
New players are typically encouraged by the devs to quest through one expansion - usually Dragonflight - to level to 70, and then start The War Within, which is where the current action is. There is a VAST amount of XP to be had in the various zones and expansions, far more than needed just to level.
But you would rather soak in the lore a bit more. OK, we can do that.
Lore and Story
You should think of Warcraft story in two layers.
There is the BIG story. It’s a cosmic story, starting with primordial cosmic powers and the creation of the universe(s), but mostly it focuses on how that affects us here on Azeroth. Each expansion adds a new chapter to that story, and in each expansion, most of that story takes place after you have hit the max level for each expansion.
And then there are all the little stories. Each zone is structured to have its own story
You start the expansion and you level through the zones in maybe a week. And matbe take another week to finish the zone stories. After that, the next two years are spent grinding dungeons and raids, and getting the expansion campaign drip-fed slowly.
This is a summary of the main story of Warcraft in one hour:
and this is maybe my favourite page about the story:
It gives a list of what happened in each year, and the wiki lets you search for more specific stories and characters.
Personally, I find the zone stories more interesting than the Grand Narrative. They are closer to the human level, and while lots of them are pretty vanilla, there are many NPCs whose stories stick with you, and I LOVE the zones (well, most of them! there are a few not quite so enchanting… :P)
Now, just to add more to this, World of Warcraft itself is not the start of the story. There were 3 Warcraft games before it, and there is an absolute stack of novels about it. There is also a movie “Warcraft” that more-or-less tells the story up to the start of WoW (but with inaccuracies - that annoys a lot of us ) that you might find on Netflix or streaming services or … somewhere.
But the video I linked above should cover it. There is a longer one on YouTube on the channel Nobbel87, and lots more if you search.
Alts
We often see new people wanting to quest through the WHOLE game and see all the zones and stories.
Because of the HUGE amount of XP available, you can’t really do that on just one character. (OK, technically you could with a LOT of locking XP at various stages, but it’d be weird.)
What you can do is make alts. We all do … we all do. I have, I think, 57 alts at the moment. I’m kinda afraid to look. We Are All Altoholics here.
An alt (short for “alternate character”) is a new character that you level from 1 to max.
You have played as a Troll Priest.
You can make alts of any race and class.
Playing as a Night Elf Druid is a very different game from a Troll Priest. Or a Draenei Paladin, or a Blood Elf Beast Mastery Hunter, or an Undead Mage.
Each Race gives you a different flavour, and a different lore of the race you come from.
Each Class and Spec gives you different gameplay.
Horde and Alliance see … mostly the same story, but with some differences. In some cases, you see the other side of the story … not so much in higher expansions, but definitely in lower ones.
You will find races and classes you love, and ones you don’t jibe so much with.
You will find which you enjoy most, and that becomes very important at max level, when gameplay becomes more challenging in more difficult dungeons and raids.
How to get what you want with Alts.
You must be conscious of the rules of levelling and expansions.
All zones in Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms scale up to 30. And they have LOTS of zones, LOTS of XP.
I would suggest making an alt,
choose Home Zone rather than Exile’s Reach when you create the character
and DON’T go to Chromie when invited.
Then just level through your home zone naturally, and follow the quests. You will find lots of lore, and meet some of the main characters. Anduin and Jaina are Alliance-side. Thrall and Alleria are Horde-side, though Alleria doesn’t enter the story until the first expansion, The Burning Crusade. But you will at least be at Chapter 1 of World of Warcraft.
When you get to 30, you can decide to go to Chromie and ask for an expansion, or you can lock your XP and stay at 30 to do more questing there.
Or you can just make a new alt!
I think the ideal to cover the content is to make one alt for each expansion. Send your BM Hunter to Outland, your Frost Mage to Northrend, your Prot Paladin to the Cataclysm zones, and so on.
See the whole game from all the different viewpoints!
Some bonus tips:
The site Wowhead
should be your first stop for any questions about quests, places, items.
The site Icy Veins
will tell you how best to build and play your character. For each spec, they have a Levelling page, like
that will give you tips.
And this MASSIVE video
will tell you many things you never knew you needed to know! It is broken up into 1-2 minute chapters, with a Table of Contents if you expand the description, so you can go straight to the subjects you are interested in.
I hope I didn’t give you too much to digest in one sitting, and I hope it all made sense.
Do please ask again about ANY question you may still have.
P.S.
One More Thing.
At 71, you can turn that godlike power toyour benefit.
A lot of the lasting appeal of WoW is that we can collect things. And we do. A lot!
You can collect armour appearances and Transmogrify your gear to give you a specific appearance. Here’s Icy Veins’ Class Sets for Priest:
You can also Collect Mounts and Pets and other things. Here’s a start, if you are interested:
Go from the Portal Room in Orgrimmar through the portal to Dalaran (Crystalsong Forest, Northrend)
Fly almost directly South to the North entrance to Wyrmrest Temple in Dragonblight.
Approach the lower room through the crevasse in the snow
At the room, right-click your portrait, and choose Raid Difficulty/25-man.
Walk straight through the room to the portal at the back.
You are in a chamber with a HUGE dragon straight ahead and lots of monsters all around. This is the Obsidian Sanctum.
Do NOT go around the room. Walk across the lava straight up to Sartharion the boss dragon and kill him. You need to kill Sartharion FIRST to get the achievement and the mount.
The whole room will go nuts, but as a mighty 71, they won’t even scuff your armour! Kill 'em. Kill 'em all!
Now loot everything. Most of it will be junk, vendor trash, but you might get a bag upgrade. Loot the chest at the base of the pile of corpses.
If you have followed the instuctions, you will also have Reins of the Twilight Drake
When you click the item in your bags, you will learn the Twilight Drake as a new mount. It’s a nice one.
Notes:
The Twilight Drake is only available from 25-player mode, not 10-player. 10-player gives the Black Drake, which is also nice, but not quite as sleek
You can only get the mount once per week per character, as the raid is weekly locked
If you want both the Twilight Drake (25-man) and Black Drake (10-man), you need to run each difficulty on separate lockouts or use multiple characters
Thank you so much for such an in depth answer! I really appriciate that!
Perhaps I was a bit too focused, on playing as one character, and I should definetly give other classes a try, and therefore the old expansions a try. I should finish Dragonflight first, and then take my Priest Troll to the depths of Azeroth as my priestly troll. Meanwhile I’ll create some more characters to learn the stories of past expansions.
I’ve got a few more questions tho. Should I lock my XP for all of the expansions + classic WoW, so I don’t go over level 30 or 35? How can I know what expansion is capped at what level and at what point should I block experience gain? And if so, where can I even lock the experience?
Will my dragonflight achievements and unlocks be avaiable for other characters? E.g. dragonriding, pets or mounts?
This is the usual thing with new players. You chose a character, and then you built it, levelled with it, bonded with it. That’s a lot of commitment. And then to abandon it seems a wrench and a betrayal.
But you are not abandoning it. It will still be your main for as long as you want it to be. But alts give you other eyes to see the game with, and an expanded game experience.
This question gets very nitty-gritty, and you have to decide how you feel about your path.
What I would recommend is that you
quest with each character up to 30 (maybe less?) in EK/Kalimdor,
You can optionally lock your XP on any or all of them while in EK/Kalimdor,
and then go to Chromie an choose an expansion
within that expansion, lock your XP at 68 until you are almost finished with it
This is using Chromie Time to your advantage. It means you are not constrained by levels. Since you started your expansion at 30, you will definitely have to lock XP early, since each expansion is designed to give you XP to get from 10 to 70 with plenty left over.
Each expansion has a “natural” range of levels when you are not in Chromie Time, for example Outland/Burning Crusade is 30-35. That works perfectly if you have levelled to 30. But Legion is 40-45, and if you show up there as a level 30, the flies on the wall will kill you. But with Chromie Time, everything will be at your level, and you can freely choose any expansion atany level from 10 onwards.
Within Chromie Time, you should lock your XP at 68 tofinish an expansion. I believe 69 also works, but the devs mess with this, so better safe than sorry.
You can lock your XP at an Experience Eliminator. There is one in Stormwind for Alliance, and one in Orgrimmar for Horde- Behsten and Slahtz. (Those names are an in-joke I won’t get into now. )
Yes.
Dragonriding is Account-Wide (or nowadays we’re supposed to say Warband-wide, I suppose). So are mounts, BUT some mounts are tied to a faction, for example the Night Elf’s Tigers are available to mount only on Night Elves, or other Alliance characters after you have achieved Exalted with Darnassus.
You will find that different mounts suit different characters, and finding the right mount for each character is satisfying.
Pets are also account-wide, with a very few also restricted by faction. Ifyou wantto get into pet battling - which is a great way to enjoy the zones as you capture pets all around Azeroth! - here is a great starter video.
Achievements and Titles are also account-wide, with vary rare exceptions.
Anything else you want to ask or clarify, now or later, please do!
Once again, thank you so much for clearing so many things for me!
I will create new characters, and enjoy the game with locking the experience and whilst in Chromie time.
I suppose I should start with playing in Kalimdor, so my last question is, can I Chromie time here, or just lock up my experience at level 68?
Thank you so much for your great help, I was discouraged by things I’ve read online about leveling above lvl 70, and now I’m looking forward to creating new characters and playing the game how I wanted to!
I will also make sure, to watch the videos you’ve sent me, and get the dragon pet, cause it looks really cool!
I’m not exactly sure what you mean, so I’m going to specify in terms that make sense to me, within the game. What my thought process would be.
You want to make a Horde character and do some zones in Kalimdor with that character. Is that it?
The other Horde races from Kalimdor are Orcs and Tauren. (I’m not a fan of Orcs myself, but everybody to their own tastes!)
Or you could make a Blood Elf or an Undead. They start in Eastern Kingdoms, but you can travel to Kalimdor. However, I will say that both of those races have an extended lore journey through their first few zones, learning about their people, so it might be better for them to stay in EK, at least until 20 or so, when making one of those races.
So let’s say you choose between Orc or Tauren. Orcs start in Durotar, a zone you’ve already been through on your Troll, so maybe you go Tauren. Personally, I find both sexes of Tauren quite acceptable as characters. People have preferences, and the sex of a character can make a big difference. Personally, I’m not keen on Male Blood Elves, Female Draenei, Male Night Elves, Female Dwarves, for example. Mostly it’s the voices. You may find similar preferences. If you do, that’s all part of learning what you like.
And you will also want to choose a class and spec. Not all races can be all classes.
For reference, I would consider Priest the most difficult class for questing. You have no spec option but Shadow available, and that is squishy and slow to kill things.
The easiest Class/Spec combinations for questing would be the pet classes Beast Mastery Hunter or Destruction or Affliction Warlock with a Voidwalker pet, or any Tank spec (but while Tank specs make for easy questing, it’s best not to go into a dungeon with other people as a Tank until you know the ropes). But you can switch specs at any time, so you can also be a Ret Paladin for DPS.
OK, so you have chosen a Race and Class, maybe a Tauren BM Hunter or Tauren Prot Paladin.
The Tauren have one of the loveliest native starting zones, Mulgore. They lived in peace until they were attacked by Quillboar. The Alliance had no help to spare for them, so they joined the Horde.
You work your way through the zone of Mulgore. There is an achievemeent for completing all the major quest chains in the zone - Mulgore Quests. After that, you could make your way to maybe Northern Barrens or Ashenvale or Azshara. You will be approaching 30.
Approaching level 30, you will decide whether you want to stay there for a while on that character or move on.
If you want to stay a while, go to Orgrimmar, find Slahtz, and lock your XP. Then go do as many zones as you like.
(Incidentally, if you want to send some gold to your new character for pocket money or things like locking XP, your Priest can deposit it in your Warbank, which you can find at any Bank, and your new character can withdraw it there.)
Whan you want to move on to an expansion, go back to Org to see Slahtz again, and ask him to unlock your XP so you can gain levels again.
Then meet Chromie outside the Orgrimmar Embassy, and tell her which expansion you want to go to. She will give you a quest to get there.
Work your way through the expansion, and go back to Org to lock your XP again when you hit 68, and unlock it when you are close to finishing the expansion.
Sorry for the confusion, I meant Kalimdor as the classic “base game” WoW, without any expansions, as the first place to play, to learn all of the story from the ground up.
With all of your help, I know everything I need to know! Thank you so, so much!
As a Chromie-time native, there are a few gotcha’s to be aware of. You will need to lock xp very quickly. While you can stay in Chromie until lvl 69, you’ll find that you completely outlevel your gear constantly. It can be beneficial to lock at different intervals to catch up, and to “catch your breath” as well. Especially if playing a brand new class, where you’ll get new talents/abilities every 15-20 minutes as you level up. All depending on your patience, of course, but I personally like to lock every 10-15 levels beoynd 30, just to let me get a “feel” for the skillset before it expands.
While Chromie-time scales up to level 70, in terms of MOB HP etc., expansions other than Dragonflight cap their item drops to ilvl 325 (332). That means if you want to get gear that match your char past 60, you’ll need to either rely on dungeon satchel reward, (from LFG), or play DF.
Also, after level 60, the level scaling gets really weird, and what’s worse: you’ll only be able to queu up for the starter dungeons of the expansion you’re in. Aka. if you’re in Pandaria, you’ll have literally 1 dungeon to run. It gets very old very fast.
As for when to lock, you can lock at the “appropiate level” for a given expansion, (30 is the non-Chromie max. level for classic, TBC and WoTLK, 35 for Cataclysm and Pandaria, etc.). It just doesn’t give you any benefits. In Chromie time, everything scales fluently up to 60, (and not-quite-as-fluently up to 69).
I strongly recommend locking at 60 at the latest. At least until they fix the LFG bug, which usually takes 1-1½ year of an expansion. At 60, you have access to all expansions, all dungeons and a lot of consumables/enhancements you can buy off the aution house. You also have 95% of your skillset, and with level-appropiate gear you can solo practically anything in a pinch.
However, at 71, and then 72, you will gain very little XP in Dragonflight, so you should find that suitable until you finish it. When you do gett he Legacy Buff, you can walk into dungeons on your own without any help!
) that you might find on Netflix or streaming services or … somewhere.
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