I am big fan of Warcraft lore and I want to ask WoW community and start discussion about this simple question.
Which WoW expansion do you like most and can you do the list of expansions from best to worst in terms of lore (including all it’s aspects like storytelling, characters, plot twists etc.)?
So please, do not consider gameplay.
Here is my list:
Wrath of the Lich King (Although more recent expansions can tell story technically better, thanks to Warcraft 3 WOTLK was the best thing Blizzard created, theme of fallen hero Arthas is unbeatable for me)
Legion (also related to Warcraft 3 and thanks to new methods how story can be told it was damn good)
The Burning Crusade (TBC could be 2nd but there were a lot of major plot holes and things that simply didn’t make sense. I will never forgive Blizzard what they did to Kael as character )
Warlords of Draenor (It was simply OK. Something was epic, something was good, somethig odd and something really bad. Personally, I don’t like alternative timelines, it relativizes impacts of big events in lore.)
Cataclysm (For me Cata was simply weak after WOTLK. It was not so bad and questing in Cata locations was fresh and interesting, but Deathwing as main villain was uninteresting and boring)
Mists of Pandaria (Maybe I get lot of hate for this. I know, that in terms of gameplay MoP was good and I also know that Pandas were in Warcraft 3 too, but I really hated it. Fat pandas, monks, kung-fu, China like Pandaria, for me it simply didn’t have that Warcraft feeling.)
I do not include Vanilla because I almost never played it and as it is base game without major theme it also lacks some main storyline and also Battle for Azeroth because it’s current and we don’t know conclusion yet (But I like it a lot so far in terms of lore).
Vanilla - No greater story but player story is the best story.
WotLK - Mostly quite good. With a few exceptions. Some things that are actually great.
MoP - Pandaria, its peoples and the Sha were great. The Garrosh-story wasn’t.
Legion - A nice finish to some open storylines. It mostly stayed on topic and didn’t introduce any too harmful changes to the game world. At no point was it great, though.
Cata -Some of the Horde-heavier zones were quite good, the elemental and twilight stuf was interesting, the firelands story was ok… but other zones (especially on Alliance side) were horrible jokes, it started butchering characters unecessarily (literally and figuratively), relied too much on Thrall’s “saviour”-story and made deathwing just another monster of the week.
WoD - The guy we just raided and captured travels back in time into another dimension, where the orcs don’t drink demon blood, but became muderous maniacs that we easily kill off anyway, Oh, and then they drink demon blood anyway, not that it changes anything. Some characters were ok, but their arcs were horribly rushed. You really felt the cut content. I kind of liked the Arakk-story, but the “Draenor is free”-moment was just so bad that it overshadows almost anything good…
BC - Just a mess. Important characters like Kael, Zul’jin and Illidan became uninteresting raid fodder out of nowhere while others like Vashj barely had any role at all. The whole space-stuff it introduced was unnecessary and to this day fails to fit in any way to the swords and sorcery around it. And it introduced the Blood Elves as a fallen race of addicts that actually fit the Horde… just to change them back to generic High Elves by the end of the Addon. I remember the addon fondly, but the story was horrible.
Edit:
Reconsidered and switched 6 and 7… as much as I hate to give WoD anything but the bottom spot.
WotLK - Had a grand story, while still retaining heavy focus on player story & world building
TBC - Probably an unpopular opinion, but I quite liked everything about it. Even the only thing I generally disliked (Illidan story) was fixed in Legion.
Legion - While I absolutely hated being the grand champion world saver, I have to say that the Surramar questlines is one of my favorite things wow ever produced. I genuinely felt heavily immersed while doing it.
MoP - It started out OK I guess, but pretty much everything came out the opposite of what I wanted, which left me with a sour taste in my mouth. At the end of SoO and after the book warcrimes, I stopped caring about wow lore altogether until my interest was sparked again with Legion.
WoD - wew… what an -pull expansion that was… I don’t even know what to say… Wow Timetravel is a mess and it shouldn’t be touched ever again if you ask me.
Cataclysm: I skipped this terrible expansion so I don’t want to add it to my list. All I can say is that this expansion ruined most of the vanilla zones, Thrall and Dragons with one hit, which is a massive achievement.
This is hard. None of the expansions were particularly good.
I know it’s not an expansion, but…
Vanilla. No real big-bad. Just condensed storylines focusing on world building. There’s nothing there that I’d deem particularly bad.
Wrath. Despite Arthas acting like a cartoon villain and as much as I consider the expansion utterly bland, moments like the Wrathgate kinda make it stand out among the crap.
MoP. 5.0-5.2? Great. A few hiccups, but great. 5.3 onwards? Crap. Utter crap. Leveling was filled with a few too many joke quests for my liking too.
TBC. Yes, I know. A lot of what TBC did was unforgivable. Randomly killing off WC 3 characters like Kael’thas and Illidan and turning the former into a complete joke was nigh unforgivable. As was patch 2.4 where they threw all the great Blood Elf lore they’d just built up in their starting areas in the trash to tie in with Knakk and his new weeb book.
But ultimately that early Blood Elf lore was what got me into the race and WoW lore in general. Plus most of the questlines from 60-70 were quite enjoyable to read. So I’ll put it here.
Legion. I hated this expansion. Suramar did nothing for me, it was just a watered down version of the Blood Elf storyline. The Horde all but ceased to exist in a plotline that was so Alliance-centric it hurt. The Burning Legion was turned from this intergalactic superpower into a complete and utter joke that fell over when confronted with a stiff breeze. Some of the class stuff was okay I guess, but the pacing was thrown off by timegating. Overall a terrible expansion with terrible lore.
Cata. Rare was the questline in this expansion that wasn’t a meme, reference or simply a childish joke. Thrall died, Go’el was born. An abomination of lore and story, Deathwing was worse than the Lich King at being the Saturday morning cartoon villain.
WoD. Time Travel. With Orcs. Why? To hammer home that Orcs are baddies, I guess? That got abandoned near the end and turned half legion. And let’s not forget: “DRAENOR IS FREEEEEE!” At least we can ignore most of this expansion.
BfA. Not only is it bad, but it’s a repeat of MoP… done worse. Zero effort, the Horde left in ruins from the very start. Cities were destroyed for this stupid plotline. Neither the Alliance nor the Horde are happy with their portrayal. The Alliance (For the most part) don’t like Anduin and the peacebrigade, the Horde is split in half between Sylvanas hating or Saurfang/Baine hating.
The dialogue is cringeworthy, the plot points are stupid, nobody gives a damn about Azeroth dying and I’m not just talking about the NPC’s.
It only gets worse from here.
1.Mop - I’m not saying it was perfect expansion as especially later patches left stuff to be desired. I liked the dailies as they were continuing the story, lorewalkers faction made purely for world building experience.
Wotlk - maybe due to sentiment but I think this expansion was done mostly right. And I am in minority that actually enjoyed Argent Tournament.
Cataclysm - it had strong points and weak points. I liked the dungeons and some zones ( loved Vash’ir) were done really nicely. I disliked most of revamped zones though, and Uldum had bigger potential. Molten front offensive was kinda neat but last raid was anticlimatic.
Legion. I really disliked this expansion. Not only the theme was repulsive to me from the very start (the apocalyptic demon invasion and green goo everywhere. It had some nice looking zones like Highmountain and Azsuna and Suramar was done really well despite being as Auela said repeated belf story - although carried much better.
And don’t get me started on Order Halls and overall story. Horde for almost entire expansion irrevelant. Vol’Jin killed which led to even more disastrous consequences in BfA. I can go on and on.
TBC I should’ve feel a huge nostalgia for this expansion because I started playing at that time but in retrospect it had plenty of issues.
I still like Zangarmarsh and Terrokar forest, and even Netherstorm. But that’s it.
WoD - it had good raids but it was still half baked expansion. Story didn’t make sense overall but it had pleasant bits like shadowmoon clan story or Arrakoa one. But because of mission table and garrisons I didn’t have any urge to play at all.
I don’t judge BfA yet. Faction story is crap but it started in Legion imo. Kul’Tiras and Zandalar are done well but as troll geek I can tell that a lot of things from Zandalari culture was still left out and I feel it was sacrificed in order to introduce blood trolls.
Azerite isn’t exciting system but it’s not as painful as Artifacts and I don’t even feel like grinding it. Many features like Warfronts and Island expeditions could’ve been done better. But in few cases class design is better I like my shadow priest and my shaman again.
With final verdict I’ll wait til expansion is over.
Vanilla isn’t expansion so I didn’t list it. I only played a bit on private servervut I’m still looking forward to classic servers even when It will have lots of vanilla issues.
I think if you make a clear distinction between “lore” and “story”, you would get very different rankings.
For instance, TBC would rank near the bottom in terms of story. It didn’t have a strong narrative, squandered the potential of characters like Vashj and Kael’thas, didn’t have many interesting minor storylines either. BfA and WoD both have severe story issues as well, such as BfA completely ignoring the existence of class orders and things like the Vindicaar, rehashing old storylines, etc. and WoD using time travel only as an excuse to visit old Draenor.
However, TBC did give us blood elves, who were fleshed as autocratic drug addicts who hid their wretchedness behind a facade of a high class society. It gave us draenei, who have truly become a trademark Warcraft race. TBC had Outland, which is IMHO amazing in how it combines traditional fantasy aspects (sword-wielding orcs and humans) with post-apocalyptic themes (it’s literally a destroyed planet) and sci-fi (Ethereals, advanced technology etc) while keeping it distinctly Warcraft. In that regard I believe TBC was mindblowing. And while BfA wasn’t that special, it still ranks much higher in the lore list because of the way it draws upon the Warcraft RPG (the BEST Warcraft lore around imo) and fleshes out Kul Tiras and Zandalar.
So, if I were to to rank the expansions in terms of lore AND of story:
Story:
MoP (yeah probably a controversial opinion but it was fresh, original and had imo no major flaws).
WotLK (wasn’t even particularly good TBH so the fact that it’s #2 says enough about how well Blizzard writes, I think).
Legion (nothing remarkable either, but I had no major complains at all… which unfortunately means it’s relatively good)
WoD (obvious issues aside, the overall pacing of the narrative was actually really good. It truly felt like a gradual conquest, people showed up at the right times, minor conflicts were interesting. A bit like a tv series, if that makes sense).
BfA (actually some good and refreshing ideas but horrible execution).
TBC (LUL)
Cata (retcons + I just didn’t care for it. It was bland and felt amazingly stale. The whole Thrall-focused narrative sucked as well).
Lore
TBC for reasons stated above. Also unlike other expansions, it didn’t butcher any pre-existing lore or have any hard retcons (except for the draenei thing but that was an improvement imo).
MoP. So much new and original lore. Good stuff.
Legion (yeah, it had some really lame retcons and didn’t do priest lore or demons any favour, but the Broken Isles were amazing imo. It also finally solidified some lore that Blizz until then didn’t seem to know what to do with).
BfA (for reasons stated above).
WotLK (have no complaints, but it didn’t really add much of value or expand upon interesting things with the sole exception of Titan stuff. I feel like 3-5 are to an extent interchangable).
WoD (forever screwed up the concept of time-travel in lore).
I can only give my opinion, for the expansions I played, so here it goes:
Legion - The first expansion that made me starting to actually care about the story.
No matter how many chapters I read in game I always wanted more.
The deaths of Tirion, Varian and Vol’Jin.
The Legion invasions.
Kil’Jaeden and Velen relationship.
Kadghar, Illidan and Velen interactions.
World ending threat: Sargeras and the dark pantheon.
Etc.
Vanilla - The first expansion that introduced me to WoW.
Everything was awesome, each zone with it’s history, each character with his unique story.
I remember feeling like a adventurer. I still remember helping a poor Orc wife to find her husband, but in the end, returning with her husband ring that my Troll Hunter found inside a crocodile, I can still remember her crying.
TBC - Going through the dark portal and visit Outland, the world the Orcs came from.
Blood Elfs lore.
MoP - I played this expansion for one month in a friend’s account, as Alliance, in a PvP server for the first time.
The scenario, was amazing and so was the music.
The story … Not so much.
Pandarens,Pandaria, Monk class, just felt awkward in WoW fantasy universe.
…
Bottom place. BfA - I congratulate this expansion for the worst reason as possible, it managed for the first time in my WoW game history to break the thing I treasured the most in this game: lore immersion.
The very only expansion, that I disliked as soon as I saw the cinematic.
The only thing I like is: Zandalar lore.
Too bad is attached to BfA experience, since I feel so much more could had been done with this race in a different environment.
Honourable mention: WoTLK didn’t played it, but I wish I did. The only expansion I regret not playing.
Expansion I am glad I never touched it: Cataclysm, or better known for me as Catastrophe.
The very first expansion where Chaotic Warchiefs started to appear, turning the Horde in to the faction of today.
TBC. Illidan was an intriguing end boss (even though Kil’jaeden was the real end boss) and both the Draenei and Blood Elves were both relevant races to the overarching plot.
MoP: it was a charming narrative that was very down to earth, which was a very nice change of pace after having fought nothing but biggerer and badderer bad guys. I boycotted the pandas at launch and I regretted it so much in hindsight.
WLK: Icecrown Citadel did not do Arthas the same justice that the Black Temple did Illidan. Varian Wrynn was a boring character, shifting personality with the patches. The Wrathgate was epic, though. It’s the only tolerable cutscene within the game.
Legion: I generally disliked this one. The Legion’s invasion of Azeroth felt… meh. Argus was shoved in and it felt so tiny. The stabbing of the world was… I don’t even have words. Also, I personally think that Legion undid everything that made Illidan an interesting character.
WoD: I actually appreciate bits of story within WoD but the overarching narrative is so dumb. Even dumber these days. I could not get the palm of my hand off of my face whilst playing through the Mag’har Orc recruitment quest.
Can’t comment on BFA yet, but it’s off to a very poor start. The Azerite is a giant, boring McGuffin that only does what the plot needs it to do. The narrative is driven by cutscenes and characters that we do not control. The whole expansion is being played as one terrible single-player game.
![:frowning:](https://d1bg94bbsh66ji.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/frowning.png?v=6" ":frowning:")
)![:peach:](https://d1bg94bbsh66ji.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/peach.png?v=6" ":peach:")
-pull expansion that was… I don’t even know what to say… Wow Timetravel is a mess and it shouldn’t be touched ever again if you ask me.