What's the best way to experience all of wow's story, in order?

[Triadne-quelthalas (Triadne)]

I juts finished the campaign for operation shieldwall and I absolutely loved it… but I thought about the fact I’ve never experienced it before. I’m not entirely sure when it is set, at what point. obviously it’s before the thunder king and before garrosh ruining the vale… but i’ve already seen those things so I’ve seen a ton of stuff out of order.
Is there some resource that has everything listed in order so we can either play through all the story content in order or read summaries of various comics or novels that story has appeared in?
I’d rather play it if I can, so whilst I am aware of Nobbel, I don’t want to use that as my primary source. I would like some sort of guide that says “go to this zone next and do this questline”, etc.

edit:
I have wholly already, but it doesn’t tell me when various quests were added into hte game, so I might be completing stuff out of order just using that.

[anon69054185]

Not aware of a resource that does that myself. Wowpedia is a good resource for summaries and other information about the game. Other than that you might want to wait for Shadowlands as the new levelling system might box things up nicely for you. If you go to the different expansion zones (eg Outland), read the quest texts and just follow the breadcrumbs, you’ll experience a lot of story in roughly the correct order. But you’ll definitely need to step outside the game several times to do some research to find out who X is.

Generally speaking following the expansion order would do most of the work for you, even though the Cataclysm storyline sticks its great steaming snout into what used to be Vanilla content.

[Gráinne-earthen-ring]

I’ve been over this a lot with new people coming to the game, or perhaps those who played the Warcraft games before WoW.

There isn’t a good way.

For a start, much of the Warcraft lore isn’t even in the game. It’s in the books, and/or the previous games, and/or the Chronicles, and/or Chris Metzen’s head, and/or whatever demented madness the writers at Blizzard Central are now cooking up.

Timeline

The good news is that every zone has its own story. This is great. It allows players going through a zone to digest a manageable chunk of local lore and story as they level.

The problems come from

a) the end-game of each expansion
b) the stuff that isn’t in any expansion

The Operation Shieldwall and Dominance Offensive (Horde-side half of that story) are maybe the best example of end-game story. Do they still require the same amount of dailies to get each new story drop? Those stories work themselves out over the two years of an expansion’s max-level evolution, and give some sense of things moving on to people who are in the otherwise-limbo of being stuck at the same level.

There is also a nice nugget of end-game story in the three ICC dungeons before ICC itself, but it’s more condensed.

Some of the end-game stories have actually been removed. The whole Cloak line from Pandaria is gone now, as is the Ring line from Draenor.

Whatever, people levelling through the content will miss out on these main narratives of the expansion, because instead of doing the end-game content, and sometimes the pre-patch content, they will just immediately move on to the next expansion.

Some of the big stories literally can’t be seen on one character. For example, Operation Shieldwall is Alliance only, and Dominance Offensive is Horde only. Even though they cover the same events over the same time, the people playing through them see different things. And the split of Pandaren between the factions, and the joining with the rest of Azeroth, can only be seen on a Pandaren character.

Blizzard have been making end-game narrative more explicit since Mists. Here’s a question for you: what is the end-game story of Outland? It’s more coherent than you might think, but it’s not explicitly in the game.

Operation Shieldwall/Dominance Offensive was patch 5.1, btw. After the two sides sent their elites (us) to Pandaria, it’s the story of the arrival of the main forces. Then, in the scenario Dagger in the Dark, which you can do solo at 120 if you ask the Lorewalker Scenario Storyteller above Mogushan, we find the point where Vol’jin, already about to break with Garrosh’s increasing craziness, gets pushed over the edge. Then in 5.2 we all have to prevent the disaster that the Zandalari have unleashed, and Jaina and Lor’themar establish an understaning that Garrosh Has To Go. 5.3 has been removed, but didn’t really have much story content anyhow; just bring Vol’jin supplies for the rebellion. And 5.4, of course, is the combined assault on Garrosh’s stronghold.

I’d say: look at where you are on that Timeline:

Timeline

and read around Wowpedia and Wowhead to find the in-game quests that lead you through that content.

[Icedbuns-silvermoon]

Since Cataclysm literally ripped apart the world, getting a coherent story is difficult.

Nobbel (I know you don’t want to use this as your only source) sadly is the best source and that’s a little annoying I understand, it not being in the game.

Also Blizzard puts a lot of key story decisions into books and neglect to ever mention them in game, something I’m not happy about at all.

[Triadne-quelthalas (Triadne)]

Thank you so much, this is brilliant. that timeline will be my saviour!

I sometimes think… why didn’t i stick around and do endgame stuff in the past… but who am I kidding, I know why I didn’t stick around. Sunwell pretty much killed it for me. doing dailies just ate away at my soul.
since then, I’ve just took regular breaks. then I lose my first account, so I don’t have the achievement score i had, and I don’t remember most stuff anyway.
So I’m going through with this toon.

I’m probably still going to be fragmented, as I’ve clearly done a lot of things to level this toon to 120, but I’m sure I’ll be able to make sense of it XD

Thanks for the breakdown of pandaria endgame too. I remember doing that scenario. going through that tunnel on the hidden stair (?). something about an assassination attempt. it’s hazy. I’ll do it again. XD

That ICC stuff sounds real juicy too! I never did get all the way through icecrown and the rest of it.

oh yes, you asked about the operation shieldwall. it took me two weeks of rep grind to get exalted and thus finish the questline. there are timewalking commendations though, so if you do a lot of timewalking (I don’t ), you can speed it up.

[Akezo-kazzak]

read Chronicles it’s awesome

[Alexima-kazzak (Alexima)]

play warcraft 3’s campaign. It’ll explain half the story in an ordered manner.

From sylvanas and Kael’thas’s backgrounds, to gul’dan and the original and second lich king.

Then when it’s over, you can start with TBC stuff and the black temple story, followed by the other expansions.