I am a returning player after around 7 yrs. I would like to go thru previous story quests etc. that I’ve missed. If you choose a previous expansion, are you stuck there until level 50, or can you go back and forth? If so, do you have to talk with the Gnome each time? Thanks!
O, also, I have a lot of different characters I play. Is there a way to check what time line one character is in? I might lose track etc.
You can go back to Chromie and switch as many times as you want but there’s really minimal benefit to doing that. It’s much faster and easier to just stay on one track.
thank you for the reply. Currently we are within Legion? So when I wish to go back I choose that? So far, it seems to be a mixture. I still have new quests on the map. Sorry, very confusing to me. I noticed how my gathering skills weren’t lvlin up, during whatever expansion I was on (Kur Tari maybe?) All pet battles were lvl 25. Jaina got into some trouble it seems (I missed out on that what lead up to it). so, wanting to take my time and get caught up in a way that makes sense to me. It’s all scattered for a returning player. I love the game more than ever tho outside of the headache of trying to get caught up.
We’re in BFA right now, but it doesn’t show up in Chrome TIme. BFA, right now, is considered “the current timeline” so you start the quest the way you did when BFA first came out by going to the warboard in Stormwind/Orgrimmar and talking to the NPC next to it. He will give you a quest to go to Sylvanas/Anduin
when Shadowlands comes out, BFA will most likely become part of chrome time as BFA is not the “current timeline” anymore
Ok, I am back at Chromie. There is an option to take me back to current timeline. If I were to do that, would my quest progress in another timeline reset? Burning Crusades doesn’t show up which I understand is the first expansion. Seems Cataclysm is the earliest we can go back? Is the only way to play vanilla is to play classic? Was hoping to make a hunter human, but tried classic it wasn’t available. I played for several months at launch in 2004. Came back for a month in 2013 I think. I have a lot of catching up to do and would like to experience what I missed.
Using chromie time all zones become available to level in. If you dont use chromie time you follow the traditional leveling path, with each zone retaining their traditional level range.
So if its on you can go anywhere and gt xp no matter the level. If its off you have to find the zone appropriate for your level.
Thats my understanding, I could be wrong.
I was confused also, I just came back after 7 years myself I left shortly after Panda expansion hit… Honestly, I had to remake all my characters but 2 because I forgot how to play each class… What I been doing is playing through each expansion from 1-50 or 10-50 depending on the race. Once you hit 50 though on any Chromie back in time it auto boots you back to the present.
So any quests you may be on (for example I was working on unlocking Nightbourne) I just had to go back to that zone and continue the quests, there were 1 or 2 quests I had to drop and retake but it wasn’t a big deal.
Though any dungeons that you may have been on during that timeline are now void because they will not show up in your dungeon finder, you will have to go there and get a team together and enter that way, it’s how I had to clear the dungeons to get to the next part of the storyline.
But I finally unlocked all the races thanks to them removing the requirement to be exalted with every faction, because that is one thing that threw me off among the long 1-120 grind back in the day, the reason I got bored playing. Not so much now!
I also find it nicer to level using Chromie because I don’t get sent 800 ways to Sunday for all the expansions trying to get me to go to 100 diff places for quests 
Let it be known draenor is the fastest way to 50; for returning players who just wanna get there.
Legion was my first expac I ran took me about 12-15 hours give or take, the list as follows that I Found online at WOWhead.
|Chromie Time Expansion|Approximate Pace|
|Warlords of Draenor|12 hours|
|Legion|14 hours|
|Battle for Azeroth|16 hours|
|Mists of Pandaria|16 hours|
|Cataclysm|20 hours|
|Wrath of the Lich King|24 hours|
|The Burning Crusade|24 hours|
I started all my characters over too. I had a lvl 50 or 60, just gave gold it had to my new ones. I’m not in a rush to get to 50. I am miffed that the new areas all have lvl 25 battle pets, and no quest givers I can find. I went back to some fav areas of mine to quest, and lvl up battle pets. can’t do that in new areas. Exile reach is largely for new players, yet, how they gonna have a lvl 25 pet? Makes no sense to me, but perhaps they have their reasons. Exile reach has pets, but u can’t fight them lol. What I meant is, the quest line/chain exile reach leads too, leads u to high lvl pet battles.