New players are generally guided towards BFA, but I know the same main characters are a big part of the lore in Legion too. I haven’t played WoD, don’t know about that. Do these main characters such as Jaina, Malfurion, Tyrande, Anduin etc. act as a big part of the earlier expansions too?
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Many of them had their roles in earlier expansions. Anduin was just a kid that got teleported away when Horde raided Sw tho. Afaik most of their quests and apperances arent in the game anymore as Cata reworked lots of the vanilla world. Some like Tirion can still be found.
One thing that greatly changed is that they treat you with respect nowadays not like a peasant only good enough to collect some roots for them.
Jaina for example had quite a few peace brokering moments in WotLk.
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Main story starts from vanilla to DF (you can forget shadowlands though, horrible expansion with horrible writing).
To grossly sum it up, each expansion has a cast of main characters you’ll sometime encounter in future (or next) expansion. Especially for the most recent expansion with Sylvanas-marysue, Anduin, Khadgar etc.
They usually face a big bad villain that requires both Horde and Alliance to make peace and fight together, then back at war. Rinse and repeat until today.
I would say however that vanilla is more short stories than a huge story arc. They do become relevant as you progress through expansions.
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The stories and quests from vanilla can be played in WOW Classic.
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start with northrend/wotlk if you want everything to make sense
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The main story kinda started in the strategy games of Warcraft 1,2 &3
Tl;dr of it, there is a pantheon of titans that go around nursing life in other planets in hopes of finding other planets, one of these titans found a corrupted planet where there were old gods trying to create an evil titan by corrupting it. Said titan then slices the planet in half > tries to convince his brothers to destroy everything in order to start fresh from zero, they don’t agree, he rebels and kills/jails them and then recruits some of the creatures he conquered in order to create the burning legion, azeroth is the one planet standing in his way but he’s too far to reach it, he tricks some orcs to serve him by drinking one of his demon’s blood and send them to azeroth > warcraft starts.
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I have pretty much only created this character on Classic servers. Should I pick the Wotlk expansion and just start doing quests in the classic zones and go from there? Like, it’s something I’d just get to sometimes out of boredom and to learn the lore, knowing it’ll take forever, but still.
They are loosely connected ever since the beginning, but the current storyline is more coherent since Pandaria I believe, based on introes at least.
Dragonflight didn’t really follow suite in this, actually. It’s barely connected to Shadowlands, instead focuses on dracthyr legacy and exploration so far.
It started before warcraft 3 with zovaal… hides
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As far as I know, Warcraft I does not contribute much to the lore. Just orcs and humans fighting each other.
Yes, just choose what race is most interesting to you and go to their starting zone. Usually one of the last quests in a zone sends you to an adjacent one.
I’d say that the “main story” mostly kicks off in Wrath of the Lich King.
Vanilla and TBC have their stories but most of them are overshadowed by the “explore, murder-hobo, explore” banner. TBC just has more focus on where the exploring is.
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I’d say Cataclysm is the expansion where zones started to gain proper storylines. You still had overarching lore even before that, but it was hidden behind a lot of generic questing and established characters from WC1 to WC3 play a much smaller part.
Well it sets the stage for the whole faction conflict with the war and stuff like Garona assassinating king Lane. But yeah, a lot of WC1 and WC2 gets retconned (especially the lore in the manual), like Medivh in WC1 is just some evil warlock who helped the orcs get to Azeroth so you are sent to kill him. The modern interpretation of his character comes later.
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The current story arc, and all the lingering story lines? If we look closely?
Starts with Mist of Pandaria - from there we arrived to Warlords, then Legion, then BfA and SL and now at DF
But really, Mist started the whole story and except the fact Cataclysm blown away the Mist that hid it? No really prevous things, and if you would start with MoP right after WC3 (tho’ WC3 really ended with Wrath, witch closed the LK story)? You wouldn’t notice the missing expansions really
TBC covers a lot of the Burning Legion lore and characters and covers Illidan and Demon Hunters also.
Wrath has a lot of details for Shadowlands.
Cata has a lot of details that lead into Dragonflight.
Very much so.
The original Warcraft story started, as Hínáta said, in the strategy games of Warcraft 1,2 &3. Mostly 3.
Here is a complete Timeline of the Warcraft Universe. You can click on the major elements to get more information about them.
And here’s Nobbel’s Complete Story of the Warcraft Universe
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You know correct. WarCraft I is just some hastely written story when Blizzard back then did not got a Warhammer license but already did doing serious development.
They started doing better story with II and with TBC Metzen found he REALLY needed starting doing a timeline to keep track when what happened.
For what happened in the first War you are better of buying “Rise of the Horde”, “The Last Guardian” and “WarCraft Chronicles 2” though in RotH Golden destroys the Timeline of the Draenei and Sin’dorei Starting Zones cause they only make chronological sense when first happened the Events of Azur and Bloodmyth Island and then Quel’thalas.
As WotLK is easier to level in and they are already done finishing the zones as Classic has still many unfinished quests.
Unfortunately WoW’s lore weaves from expansion to expansion a little too well. It’s very often not clear what’s going on with the characters because each expansion is treated like a single campaign in Warcraft 3, so realistically you need 4 expansions to make a cohesive story, which is pretty much exactly what happened.
I’ll say this though: Dragonflight is a clean break in this respect. You don’t need to know a lot of Warcraft lore to catch on with what’s going on in Dragonflight, Warlords of Draenor through Shadowlands really did require intricate knowledge of the lore from the previous expansion to understand.
No, it doesn’t. The story starts in the warcraft games. Just by playing it is almost impossible to follow the story, because you have to read every tiny bit of information. What OP should do to understand wow’s story is to unironically watch youtube videos lol
(Little late, sorry.)
As Alliance, there is a whole MoP questline about finding Anduin and sending him back to his father and him not wanting to go yet despite having been shipwrecked and kidnapped along the way. Takes a fair chunk of the Jade Forest. He’s still a scrawny teenager all through this and I’m not even sure the WoW writers knew he was going to inherit the throne within a few years.
Look this game is really old. And the story is even older than the game, because there were previous games in the Warcraft franchise.
During WoW’s life, it has had multiple expansions, it’s had content removed, content rehashed and it had its content completely turned upside down in an attempt to make the levelling experience faster.
I recommend that you just get in and enjoy the game for its gameplay. When you come across a Character that interests you, or you hear of a Great War or event, head to Google and read up about it on one of the many many great resources online. Or even watch a YouTube video, many creators have unraveled the spaghetti and tell some great stories.
WoW really is a game best played in the present. It’s been developed that way because that’s the way the core player base spent their time in the early days of the game.
Enjoy the game for the game itself, and use the resources around the game to fill in the old story.