I’m mainly interested in WoW for the story/lore and art, so I’m interested in playing these pre-cataclysm WoW versions.
One thing that confuses me a bit, say I wanted to do a “complete playthrough” of the stories of horde or alliance in WoW Classic, would I be better off starting with the regular WoW Classic launcher or just go straight to WotLK, since it is presumably the same experience, just with WotLK included.
Or does regular WoW Classic have content that WotLK changes/removes in some way, so it would be better to switch once I’m at the end of the regular Classic “main
story”
I looked it up online and did not find any answers, so I’m grateful for any advice:)
My advice is to go with the Wotlk as the class and gameplay changes makes living a much easier. The story is pretty much the same, there might be some side side quests removed and some added, but story is the same
I agree. If you are only in it for the story, you will have an easier time in Wrath. Leveling is way easier, less elite quests, it’s harder to die. You might miss some few quests, like Onyxia, but especially in TBC there were also a few more side quests added in Azeroth.
Maybe check out Hydraxian Waterlords, as it is pretty empty and also there is role players and lore nerds all about.
But except for those all other quest chains are available in WOTLK and even some Classic quest chains that were hard to do in Classic because it involves dungeons and raids can be solo in WOTLK for some classes like DKs and Paladins, including the famous quest chain to open AQ, The Scepter of the Shifting Sands. You won’t get the mount nor the title in WOTLK but you can do the quests for the story. I did it back in the original WOTLK and it is worth it.
Those two quest chains could be completed in WOTLK but only if you started at least during TBC like I did, but even if you can’t do all there are still many quest stories available that it is easier to do in WOTLK than Classic. And any raids or dungeons you can’t solo in WOLTK are still available in Retail so between both you can play all Classic WOW stories except those 2 quest chains.
Yes, it is already gone. It was content originally removed in patch 3.0
It wasn’t removed due to Onyxia being revamped to level 80, it was removed due to Bolvar being replaced with Varian in Stormwind. That is why only the Alliance version was removed. The Horde prequest was still available up until Cataclysm.
The reason was that in lore Varian found that Lady Katrina Presto was Onyxya and killed her in her lair with means Onyxia Raid and Prequest are no longer canon, our characters didn’t kill her.
That happened in an old comic book released before the original launch of WOTLK. When WOTLK launched it was made the canon story of Varian returns, effectively erasing Vanilla Onyxia raid from continuity
“The comic establishes that canonically, Varian Wrynn and his allies raided Onyxia’s lair and killed Onyxia at the end of The Burning Crusade events, not the adventurers and not during Vanilla. Same goes for Alliance quest plots of the Onyxia’s Lair attunement such as the rescue of Reginald Windsor from Blackrock Depths and the revelation of Onyxia in Stormwind City, making the involvement of the adventurers of the Alliance and Horde in-game non-canon.”
It depends on how much are you familiar with the story.
If you have not played warcraft III reign of chaos + the frozen throne campaigns, I would like to suggest you to start there. It puts many things into larger perspective and I just loved to go through the locations from the RTS :]
I just wish I could repeat the feeling playing fresh - without any knowledge - warcraft and then vanilla :]
You can wait until November and see if there will be Season 2 of Mastery, if there is and you play it, at the end of it 1 year later you could move to Wrath from SOM. This way you could play through all the quests including the 2 removed.
