Most expansions have an easy story to follow. Cataclysm in retail is confusing to me because i don’t know when i’m doing side missions or “campaign” based quests.
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Do you mean the max level Cata campaign? That goes from Hyjal to Vash’jir, or vice-versa, then Deepholm, Uldum, and Twilight Highlands.
Or do you mean the revamped questing zones?
In either case, both are very linear in terms of questing.
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Zone quest achieves list questlines
They didn’t distinguish between campaign and side quests with “[!]” vs “!” until a later expansion.
Same thing is true in Vanilla, TBC and Wrath.
All the end game zones are pretty seperate so they were just done in level order with hyjal and vashir both being optional starting points.
Even at the time you didnt need to do all the zones to hit max, i remember skipping hyjal entirely and barely touching deepholm going vashir-> uldumn-> twilight highlands my first time through.
The over arching story for most zones is old gods and cultists are everywhere, go stop them and maybe figure out their connections to the elemental lords and deathwing thatll lead to the dungeons/raids this zone has.
Later, i think there were a couple max level zone campaigns tied to the raids; like the firelands had a hyjal mini update, and the hour of twilight stuff leading to dragonsoul but max level story content was pretty much all told in dungeons/raids til id say wod and didnt really break out into post leveling campaigns til legion.
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He’s going to hit 70 before he completes those zones and get kicked out. So he needs to go back at a higher level when he outscales them, or finish it on an alt.
TLDR: If you’re leveling, hit Hyjal 100% and that is going to level you all the way out of the zone TBH. Maaaybe go and open up Uldum for later. it’s important to do that. That’s it.
Aside from what has been mentioned that “campaign” quests were not a thing back then, the problem with Cataclysm in the present is that you are playing it after it’s unfolded.
Obviously that is the case for all previous expansions, but what I mean is that Cataclysm iterated on top of the same zones, not new ones. So when you start at Hyjal for example, you finish the introduction, and jump straight into Firelands breadcrumbs that have nothing to do with the opening expansion, and it changes your phasing on that zone semi-permanently, which makes it hard to figure out you should’ve left the zone.
Also, I feel like the story doesn’t do a great job taking you to Deepholm which, honestly it’s a forgotten zone in it of itself, for many newer players.
Last, Cataclysm tried to copy the Wrath model, in that there were two distinct ways to start the expansion. Hyjal or Vashjr. So the “campaign” was never really linear to begin with.
Right now what makes sense is to do Vashjr 100% (always swallow the vegetables first, ew), then go to Hyjal and push till you get to Firelands, then go to Deepholm, then go to Uldum and finish at Twilight Highlands.
It’s SUPER overkill if you’re leveling BTW. all this only applies if you’re just completing quests and loremaster though, I’d go that route.
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fortunately, there is a campaign questing guide on wowhead that will show you the appropriate path to go from start to finish. While this was not the first expansion to offer two different starting zones it was pretty linear back in the day. The only problem is with chrome time everything has gotten away from being linear. So it’s probably a little difficult to follow these days. But back in the day, it was a much simpler path
There’s a story in the game?
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I remember back when cata came out a lot of people in my guild complained you were kind of just jumping all over the place since none of the zones were connected. It was lacking that nice flow you had previously from wrath.
I’ve been asking myself the same question since 2010
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There isn’t much of a difference. And back then, the side quests were designed to be done side by side with the main questline.
Made it more efficient for questing and xp gain.
Its funny because then they did it again for SL hah.
I didn’t really mind the jumping around during cata. What I didn’t like was how we got vash and the major content was cut from it. So after questing, it was just another throwaway.
Rip abyssal raid.