So, I’ve finished the first two Chronicles (great reads too) and working on the third. I kind of refuse to play WC3 because the genre really isn’t for me. Got partway through it and I’m just… no.
Thing is, the lore of the Warcraft universe is massive, and reading somewhere in the neighborhood of literally 30+ books to get an understanding of said universe is really impractical. I want to play and experience the lands, characters, and all that good stuff after I finish Chronicles III, but is it actually enough to understand the plot?
Playing through WOW should get you all the info you really need, and looking up things on WOWpedia as they interest you. Reading the books will give you a deeper appreciation for characters, but also will vex you as what is in game ignores things from the books…
I’ve never enjoyed the gameplay of WC or SC much either, but I love the story. I’ve used the in game GODMODE cheat code to just enjoy them and see the story MANY times. I’d recommend you do that.
WC3:Reforged comes out SOMETIME this year, and will have updated lore, so it might be better to buy and play that one.
I did buy WC3:Remastered, solely for the lore, but being terrible at RTS games got caught up on the Undead “Blackrock and Roll, Too” quest and was just done. Might just Godmode it like you said. The story isn’t bad. Good, even (SC2 was as well, if you ignore HotS), and probably more detailed than Chronicle III which is apparently trying to condense WoW, TBC, WotLK, Cata, and Pandaria all into one book.
Then again, if I wanted detail the obvious answer would be “read all the books,” so yeah, something a good deal more concise.
Honestly though, the Chronicles books by and large are really good reads that have provided a great deal of backstory.
I play Horde characters (will play Alliance too at some point), but now that the leveling system scales to all zones, it’s kind of difficult to determine starting area and progression, unfortunately.
Yeah, I hate that system. It makes it so when you are max level, you STILL get dismounted everywhere since every enemy’s aggro range is still maxed. Very stupid.
Godmode takes a lot of fun out of the game so what I actually did when cheating was usually turn off Fog of War so I could see everything. It’s enough of a cheat to make the game pretty easy but not insta-win, and the computer is using it so why shouldn’t you?
If you really want, plenty of people on YouTube have assembled the story portions of Warcraft III together for viewing. World of Warcraft does a good job of filling you in on what happened in W3, but it doesn’t really hold a candle to having seen it firsthand.
For example, seeing Chen Stormstout in Pandaria is so much more exciting after having played Founding of Durotar.
There’s still a lot of unique story to experience in WCIII. I like RTSs, but I’ve also had the feeling of wanting to play through for story but just didn’t want to deal with it.
So use cheats, I often just insta won a map to continue to the next one. You still get to watch all the startup and debrief, but may miss some stuff from the mission. You can also just turn on god mode, infinite gold, just steamroll the enemy while playing through the mission.
It depends on what you feel is worth your time. With You tube and Google, you can piece together the stories in a logical history.
People say Nobble is an Alliance biased guy, but I found his videos informative. I dont vouch for his videos as a whole - but the ones I have seen are informative and worth a look.
But I agree with what I quoted.
As a person who played WC3 like a madman when it was current - I would suggest you just wait until reforged comes out.
It would probably line up with chronicles more so than the old version, anyway.