My son and I are leveling new characters together (allied races), and I am trying to decide on an xpac in which to do it. I am new to Chromie time but understand that we can choose to level from 10-60 through any prior expansion. I am not looking to speed level as this is my son’s first real exposure to WoW, and I want him to savor it.
Of the available expansions, Legion would offer the artifact weapons and class mounts, and I believe these would be retained after hitting level 50 and moving to DF (the weapon(s) as skins for transmog). I have already done the BfA war campaign and Zandalar quests 2+ times to unlock zandalari and vulpera for my son and me and have no real interest in doing these again. I hated WoD (and missions in general) and never want to do garrison mini-gaming again.
Are there any other xpacs that offer anything as compelling as Legion? Aside from interacting with Chromie, selecting Legion, and starting the breadcrumb quest, is there anything else we need to do? Are there any notable differences in the gear acquired across expansions? My preference is to not use heirlooms as they devalue quest rewards and dungeon drops.
I’m getting 2 different vibes from this as to the goal. On one hand you’re asking about long term rewards and whatnot, and on the other you want him to savor the experience. The latter indicating to me that story is an important consideration. So I guess depending on what you mean would effect the answer.
As for the “stuff you get out of it” side, it’s hard to argue with legion giving weapon skins and class mounts. That would be my go to from a veteran perspective if I needed any of those.
From a story/lore perspective I think Lich King is a great place to start as it’s sort of just “classic warcraft” through and through. Although from a strictly leveling point of view, I think every single expansion has a pretty good experience. Including WoD really, since leveling doesn’t deal with too much garrison stuff.
For a completely new player, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention EK and Kalimdor though. Even with the cataclysm revamp, there’s something that just always feels right about trudging my way through places like westfall or the barrens, only to realize looking at the map that no matter how big those zones feel, there are dozens more of them out there waiting to be explored. It really appeals to my sense of adventure. This option for chromie time would be under the Cataclysm expansion.
Whatever you choose though you can’t really go wrong and I’m sure your son will love it. In fact, maybe going over the basic premise of each expansion’s story and let him decide which one to level in would be the best way to go.
While Legion is one of my favorite expansions, so much of the cool content is end game. The actual leveling quests are fine, but if you’re just leveling it can feel incomplete.
This may sound like a weird suggestion, but don’t count out Cataclysm. Why? It’s probably got the best lead in content for Dragonflight story-wise if you pick the right zones. (And as Cataclysm zones are mostly pretty self-contained, you can pick and choose at will.)
Azshara (Horde-only) has blue dragonflight quests.
Feralas has lots of green dragonflight quests.
Badlands gives you the origin of Wrathion. (Plus of course The Day Deathwing Came.)
Twilight Highlands for red dragonflight story.
PLEASE be aware : Legion, while amazing and does offer the artifact weapons thing, a couple things need to be taken as a note.
Firstly (and my primary reason for coming to the forums), the timewalking is great, however the quests for some class’ weapons have NOT been edited / retooled when the skill trees have been edited with DF. For example, the Warlock questline eventually has you needing to use the demonic gateway skill. Unfortunately that isn’t learned by default anymore, as well as being nowhere near available at level 10 if you were to start trying to do the quests right at timewalking start of level 10. I’ve recently started a rogue, and it’s wanting me to pickpocket the jailer, unfortunately, again, at level 10, that’s not a skill (it’s at least a default skill, but not until level 28 by what the skill book shows?).
Secondly. The artifact weapons unfortunately are NO LONGER “empowered”. When the sword got thrust into the world, as far as storyline goes, the artifact weapon’s powers were all sacrificed to keep the world from dying. So, while you can still get artifact weapon empowering gems / whatever, even tossing them into the weapon won’t give them any actual “power” and any dropped weaponry will be more powerful, even heirlooms are more powerful than them unfortunately. This doesn’t mean they’re not useful though, just getting them granted you the cosmetic at least 
So yeah, feel free to go through the Legion area, but don’t get too “hung up” on the class hall storyline if you can’t get through the weapon acquisition for a while.
Note also, if you’re timewalking, when you reach level 60, Chromie will start a timer that you can not (that I was able to find) stop. Once the timer is done, you will be warped back to chromie in the home town, and you are ripped out of timewalking. If your son’s still timewalking, you won’t be able to see each other even if you were to walk / fly over to their same position while in party…it’ll show them as phased out. Either they’ll have to get to 60 as well, or get back to town and “return to present” via chromie.