Returning casual player - Question about getting all the story perspectives

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I’ve played WoW on and off for a while, but recently dove back in after igniting my interest in the story and lore beyond the aesthetics I appreciated.

Focusing on getting a newly created character through BfA and Shadowlands as the devs intended.

As far as I know, playing the expansions through with both Alliance and Horde characters provide the full story/both perspectives, so if you play only one side you aren’t getting the full picture/content.

Does the same go for all other expansions?
How does it work for expansions that introduce new races?
Would there be a benefit to playing Mysts of Pandaria or Legion for example, with an Alliance, Horde AND Pandaren/Demon Hunter character?
Do these “special” classes just have a separate starting zone and then join the Alliance/Horde storyline?

I’m planning on playing all starting zones eventually anyway, I’m just unsure how the story/content difference between Alliance and Horde is handled pre-BfA (where the split is quite dramatic as far as I can tell).

Thanks in advance for you reply:)

EDIT: With casual I mean: Not particularly interested in grinding for gear/PVP, all I’m here for is the story, the world etc.

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In BFA there are 2 horde stories (depending on which side you’re on) and 1 alliance story, in Shadowlands I first created 1 character for all 4 covenants, but it was too much work, now since 9.1.5 we can switch covenants freely with our main character.

In Legion every class had their Class Order Hall story with their class mount at the end. They were all pretty unique and had a nice story for every specc (36)! Also profession questlines many liked. And the mage tower (very difficult solo challenge) for every specc! So this was truly the expansion were many people leveled up every class :slight_smile: Even the new dragonflight class will get a class order hall as far as I know.
I was new in legion and had fun learning every specc, but veterans had already leveled hordes of alts in warlord of draenor because there wasn’t much content from what I heard.
Of course in Mists of Pandaria and already the expansions before Horde and Alliance is different.

So at least 1 Horde and 1 Alliance character I would say. And as you level very fast and wanna experience every story / expansion, you can level every class in different chromie time expansions if you like. Whenever one is level 50 you start the next one in a new chromie time expansion. So you don’t waste levels/experience and see every expansion. They tried to make one chromie time expansion = level 10-50.
Maybe you also like mount farming, not unsual to use all your 50 characters that you can have on your account haha :smiley:

I also made sure to have every race. Class/race combinations that are a bit special that I remember were Paladin Blood elves (" Blood Knights", they got their own transmog and mount now). And Void elf/Blood elf Hunters got a “Dark Ranger transmog” now I think. Not sure if there are ther races that can be dark rangers. Also for people who wanted to play High Elves / Quel’dorei blizzard says most of them are blood elves/void elves now. Not sure if those things interest you, it’s purely lore/cosmetic stuff. It’s about the Windrunner sisters lorewise.

And the demon hunters / Pandaren stuff you asked, yes they have their own starting zone (DK’s as well with the lich king!) but then they just join Horde/Alliance story.

PS: I find it very difficult to play everything in order in game, I learned all the lore from youtube videos :smiley:

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Thank you! That was very helpful

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Not as much as BFA. And in different ways.

In Legion, it’s the same story for Alliance and Horde, but each CLASS gets a separate story about the class, in the Class Halls. So you would need that mant characters to cover them all. However, these stories don’t form a significant part of the Legion story, so you can get the full Legion story without them. Though they are excellent as side-stories they’re not essential.)

In Warlords, it’s mostly the same story for Alliance and Horde, but the Alliance and Horde have different home zones, and so have a different story in that zone, where Horde meet the Orcs and Alliance meet the Draenei.

In Mists, it’s the same story for Alliance and Horde, with the small difference that the Alliance and Horde ally with two different local races, but in the same zone. Apart from that, they do the same quests and see the same story through levelling. After levelling, they are still following the same story, but from two different sides.

New Races - “Allied Races” - are all unlocked by doing a quest chain that introduces you to the new race. You need a Horde character to do the quest chains for the Horde Allied Races, and an Alliance character to recruit their Allied Races. So, for example, to make a Highmountain Tauren, you must have completed the zone they occipy in Legion, Highmountain, and then find their emissary at the Orgrimmar Embassy and do a series of quests from him. Then you can make one.

Not especially, no. In Legion, you do get the bonus Class story with each class you make. Pandaren get nothing special in Pandaria apart from their Starter Zone, which is quite nice.

 

There really is no significant difference between the Alliance and the Horde experience in Shadowlands. Each of the four Covenants has its own story. I suppose if you want to be thorough, you could being your Alliance and Horde characters up through two of them, then switch to the othe two and go thorugh their stories as well.

So yeah, I think that two characters - one Alliance, one Horde - will be necessary, and those two characters will be sufficient.

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Thank you, I could not have hoped for a better and more thorough answer, thanks a lot!

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