Just started the game this week after a few false starts in the past and am wondering if there is a main quest I can go through to get caught up on the story. As things stand right now I have no idea what is going on or who most of the characters are (my Warcraft lore knowledge starts and ends with WC3). I tried looking on google, but couldn’t find any useful info
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ok basically there was a big war in warcraft 3 which set the stage for wow
major villain was demons invading the planet and arthas leading the undead
he was defeated a few expansions ago
demons were defeated last expansion
a bunch of other villains popped out of nowhere and we killed them as well.
the two factions horde and alliance fought in the past. sylvanas then started a war pretty much out of nowhere this expansion. then she left the horde.
Uhhh…. no. Not exactly. Catching up on a decade and a half of lore isn’t going to happen over night; however, there are some youtube videos that could be revealed by a simple search that do… summarize.
If you interest in particular areas of lore, somebody could point you in the right direction there as well.
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OK so basically I just go to whatever areas interest me to get their specific lore and for the overall plot I have to do a some research? Seems kinda unfriendly to new players, but oh well
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It is extremely unfriendly, yes. The best thing to do is read the Chronicles books, if you can get your hands on some kind of copy of them. Here’s the deal: story line progresses with each expansion, and each expansion has always added new maximum levels, so the story tends to progress as you level up. The order is as follows:
- Classic WoW
- The Burning Crusade
- Wrath of the Lich King
- Cataclysm
- Mists of Pandaria
- Warlords of Draenor
- Legion
- Battle for Azeroth
- Shadowlands
However, the original leveling experience (level 1- 60) in Classic is erased from the game, as Cataclysm revamped the old world. So leveling used to progress in time Cata (1 - 60) -> Burning Crusade (60 - 70) -> Wrath (70 - 80) -> Cata (80 - 85) -> so on (85 - 120), where you kind of get displaced in time for BC and Wrath. However, with the most recent patch, you can choose to level up any expansion basically, meaning you experience chunks of the story from various times. Leveling is now 1- 50 in any expansion you choose, and 50 - 60 is Shadowlands.
It’s a mess.
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For the most part, the new introduction zone, Exile’s Reach, and then the subsequent drop into Battle for Azeroth is meant to just toss new players into the thick of it and hope they can get the general feel of either faction through that.
No real explanation as to what Azerite is or why we want it (or why there’s a big sword sticking out of the planet), why the Horde/Alliance hate each other, just… “Here’s a war, off you go. Get us some allies.”
Doing things chronologically is a bit of a nightmare because they updated the old world during the 3rd expansion, Cataclysm, so to actually go and do those original quests you have to play WoW: Classic.
In Shadowlands, main zone story quests will be marked with shield symbols behind the exclamation points so they stand out a bit more from standard quests.
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Best hope would be to take a look at a YouTube video, I’d recommend Nobbels videos personally.
Unfortunately WoW doesn’t have a main storyline as each expansion tends to more or less be completely separate from each other with very little characters really linking them together.
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If we’re being realistic, though, the only way to “really” figure it all out (if you weren’t here since pre-cata days) is to read the Chronicle series; they’re a rough chronological telling of everything. How you get physical copies (or maybe pdf’s?..), well that’s up to you. 
From there, just do in-game stuff, and take note of exactly when each zone was released to get an idea of when it occurs in the expansion progression.
EDIT: Just my personal preference, I stay away from youtube videos. They all have very strong biases, and it’s hard to tell fact from opinion unless you already know stuff. I don’t know where Nobbel stands these days, but back in the day, he had some frankly disturbing torture/revenge fetishes/fantasies about making Sylvanas suffer that bled into his work (and it showed in his predictions and interpretations), and I don’t generally like to support… that.
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I feel like the attempt to make things easier for new players with Chromie Time actually just made it worse.
WoW has had a new player problem for a really long time. They’ve tried to fix it a few times, but each time they make it easier for new players to level, they make it harder to keep track of the story. Most players don’t really care about the story. Those that do are better served finding sources outside of the game to help them because it’s very easy to do the content out of order or skip important chunks altogether because the questing experience was written for much slower leveling, and you’ll outpace it.
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Nobbel is likely the biggest lore wow creator out there, but you can also find videos by T&E (Taliesin & Evitel) as well as Bellular. There are liklly others but those seem to be the big ones.
As mentioned, and If you are up for it, warcraft three is likely essential to getting a good foundational understanding of the wow universe. I also found the War of the Ancients books to be good, especially if you are interesed in the more ancient history of thw night elves.
At this point there has been So much media around wow that it wount be easy to catch up in it entirly in a quick manner. i recommend looking up characters, places, or events as you encounter them and if they stand out.
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Platinumwow is my personal favorite, though he does not have topics for everything, he does make lore very fun and more approachable with 20 min videos.
Generally how I learned was I read every quest and when I came upon something I didn’t know I looked it up. Because of the nature of wow, with retcons, faction only lore, and different writers wanting different things, sometimes it gets muddy what is truth or if there even is one. But you probably want general history of things. You can also learn stuff from the lore forums but should double check what people say as misinformation is pretty rampant. It’s a way to be aware of things not commonly mentioned in quests or in wikis.
Thats uh… Thats not great. I was never a huge fan of him but it’s good to know regardless.
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Read the books too, they are pretty good an are relatively easy to follow.
Or read wowpedia summaries 
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Those are less “lore people” and more “content people”. Or in T&E’s case, “reaction people”.
Bellular: “Here is what is happening and what it could mean based on previous evidence and speculation. I will tilt my head thoughtfully to the left and right on a loop because it increases viewer engagement with the subject.”
Taliesin: “EEEEEEEEE. You know what that means, fams! Everyone was delighted and loved everything Blizzard chose to do and-- no, it was a 
show, obviously.”
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Wowpedia is pretty great for information. That website has a timeline which has all the events in order. Those events have their own pages which explain them in detail. Including which characters are involved, who have their own pages. It can be a lot to take in but if you separate the events by expansion it’s easier to understand.
Overall yes. They do put out dedicated lore specials though. That would be more what I’m referring.
If you are interested in the lore you should watch these videos.
The history of wow in 23 minutes, good and funny watch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmhO1LldIQw&t=178s
This guys has a good breakdown of the lore for that expansions, focusing on what you need to know for its story at the time.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8an3fX1RC8p7Nsb6NcizZA
then if you like this and are still interested. I would suggest buying the chronical books, and visiting the most popular and super detailed lore channel.
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Yeah it is kind of crappy. A lot of lore takes place out side of the game, in the books and short stories. You could try reading up on the summaries on Wowpedia. It’s a big rabbit hole, especially if you don’t have a good starting point, and wow alone is 25 years worth of lore, but it’s a start at least. But you also came to the right place to ask questions. Others have Nevins Nobbel on YouTube, he’s very good. You can start there as well.
I love Noble’s channel and it’s one of my favorite on YouTube but as I’ve introduced more and more friends to world of Warcraft the one thing I’ve realized is his videos are a bit too detailed for beginner because as he goes into a story there’s so many other characters and stuff involved it’s hard to get perspective when you have a 4-Hour lore video on one character so I feel like it’s best to get the quick summarizations from other channels and then as you find certain topics more interesting than go to Noble’s channel because you won’t find anything better in terms of deep dive breakdowns
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