From my understanding as a newer player, my character in The War Within has canonically adventured through each expansion and defeated the biggest, baddest enemies ever to exist on Azeroth and helped save the world countless times over. She is a proven hero and experienced adventurer of significant renown.
Problem:
The options to directly experience my character’s backstory in-game while playing as only this character are limited:
I can take my max level character and travel back to legacy content with the narrative hurdle of justifying why taking a portal, a boat/zeppelin, or simply traveling to the next zone over sends me back in time, how I am able to defeat legendary foes alone with a single attack, or how saving an entire village can take mere minutes. There is no weight to my actions in this option, and death is practically an impossibility.
Start fresh and level a new character and lock XP gain below level 70, reserving the ability to use Chromie Time to hop between expansions with imperfect scaling and with access to a limited dungeon finder. However, in so doing, I cannot engage with current content (I miss all seasonal/temporary content and cannot play with friends at max level), and the moment I elect to level to 70, my access to Chromie Time is revoked.
Do a combination of (1) and (2), splitting my playtime between multiple characters and managing achievements, unlocks, reputation, quest completion, gear, and other separate progress and activities between them. This doesn’t solve the narrative problem because my max level character will not have done the things the level locked character has done, but she will nonetheless be treated by the story and NPCs as if she has.
Solution:
An optional game mode, Loremaster Mode, in which you can play your max level character in any expansion, engaging with content scaled properly down to experience it closer to how it was originally intended. You enter from the character select screen, and Loremaster Mode locks your character at a particular strength/item level to align with the zones/content that was current during the expansion you picked.
Features:
Full dungeon/raid/expansion feature finder for the expansion you chose for solo queuing, and you can queue cross-realm with others who have opted into this mode.
Your reputation, achievements, transmog, collections, and progress carry over from this mode (it would be objectively harder and slower to obtain these, so there is no incentive to opt-in if you are chasing rewards).
You can opt-out at anytime to resume playing in current WoW or switch to a different expansion. Progress is saved within each expansion.
Quest progress can be reset as often as you wish (though repeated adventures will not provide repeat rewards), so you can replay your favorite zones and expansion campaigns alone or together with friends.
World-wide phasing in which quests from future expansions are hidden and NPCs are exclusively where they should be based on the expansion you chose.
Isn’t this just Chromie Time at max level?
Not exactly. From my limited experience, Chromie Time does not properly scale group content (which is why you at level 15 can be grouped with someone at level 68 who can more or less solo the dungeon) and queuing for certain content is either not an option or requires a group (e.g., LFR, mythic island expeditions, warfronts). It also does not permit you to repeat quests.
Why not just play Remix or Classic?
The primary goal is to play all content on a single existing character. Neither Remix nor Classic supports this. Additionally: (i) in Remix, you are quickly overpowered, group content is a mad dash to the end without challenge, shortcuts are baked into the structure, and it is for a limited time, so you cannot enjoy the journey at your own pace; and (ii) in Classic, you cannot carry anything over to current WoW, and it aims to restore legacy content to its original form. Loremaster Mode would scale and limit current WoW to the expansion you choose; it would not restore expansions and/or content to a former version.
This is the perspective that I have from interacting with NPCs in Legion, BFA, and TWW. Many quests and central characters refer to my history, my accomplishments, and my relationships with NPCs (e.g., Wrathion calls me an old friend, I walk side by side with Jaina into Kul Tiras to represent the Alliance, etc.) and generally rely on me or treat me like an important, influential person that will help. If I didn’t have this history, I would wonder why Anduin, Alleria, Thrall, Jaina, and countless others so readily count on me when the end of world is at stake.
If I am working off a mistaken assumption or incomplete information, please correct me. I want to understand my character’s history as it is represented in-game from the perspective of the main story and NPCs.
Can you elaborate from your perspective as a loremaster?
I have been playing WoW for about 7 months now, and while I am enjoying it, a significant criticism I have is the absence of a way to meaningfully engage with legacy content. It feels like 20 years of content is relegated to an enormous list of busywork. And yet, the lore from legacy content feels important because current events in TWW and what seems to be coming in the rest of the Worldsoul Saga refers back to Old Gods, Titans, the Void, the Light, the pasts of central characters like Sylvanas and Anduin, and much more.
If I had a chance to play through legacy content with this character in a way that didn’t feel like it was completely irrelevant and trivial, it would positively contribute to my attachment to my character, the world, and the future content yet to be released. I know that veteran players might see little value in my proposed Loremaster Mode, but I am thinking of newer players like myself that want to play current content and still engage with legacy content in a deeper way. If it helps attract new players and get them invested in WoW, I would think it would be worth some effort.
It depends on how you get satisfaction of it but I’ve gone through it and a friend has gone through it and there’s two good ways to get it that may give the sense of satisfaction that you might be after.
I’ll give a little bit of context before it begin because in the wider scheme of things I didn’t start too long ago.
My background
So I started in Shadowlands (2021) with some exposure beforehand (friends at work mentioned liking Battle for Azeroth? and some play at a friends place just to give him company till like level 17 once upon a time. I started my Loremaster journey the year afterwards as a means to expand the introduction to the lore that the game already did (i’ll expand on this next).
What the game does
With Loremaster and cutscenes the game already gives references back to information that is pertinent, typically scaling creatures up. Even before the catchup/Loremaster experiences they introduced the context through a quick recap representation. My first introduction to the ‘past’ was through the plays done in Ardenwield where they talked about the past bosses and you got to fight a ‘rare’ that represented it. This is enough for a lot of players!
Experiencing the past (method 1) max character:
The Loremaster journey a lot is the novel of also fighting the same mobs and for me some parts I don’t particularly value (gather 15 herbs now gather 14 herbs). Turning on a quest voiceover and actually listening to it all as you go through it can be very satisfying.
This is how I personally did BUT I also helped a friend who wanted a ‘more satisfying’ way of doing it.
Take characters through an appropriate pathway (method 2)
My friend feels the way you do and for his Loremaster Journey we’ve made characters that go through each ‘zone’ we have been two Gnomes who have recently killed all of Northrend together. Then made two Pandas for Pandaria. Got him 3 parts of Loremaster already!
Disagree there’s no good way of making someone experience the whole lore - it has to come from within like it has for you and me. New players get a summary and get ‘fed’ a trail of what we have. If they then have a lore interest they can go back.
Therein lies the problem. Blizzard does this for the timewalking raids, where they assign you a specific ilevel and give you stats broadly equivalent. Problem is, the content is a cakewalk versus how it was contemporaneously. The issue boils down to access to abilities that are in no way balanced for the original content. Scaling can’t change those or restore their original state of balance – or the attempt at it Blizzard made back then. And, that’s saying nothing about how miserably Blizzard has been failing at getting scaling for queued content correct. Just try a low-level healer (sub-20) in timewalking dungeons and you’ll see what I mean.
If you want to experience the content as it was meant to be, I’m afraid Classic is the only way to do so. Which, obviously does nothing for your intent of making a more realistic roleplay experience, filling in the gaps of knowledge your character lacks. As an example, a pretty major character looked at me with familiarity when I did the preexpansion storyline for Midnight in Shadowlands. When, in fact, I as the player missed any interaction where that familiarity could have been fomented. Blizzard does this for every one of their story beats, and like you, I’m growing pretty tired of it.
Here’s to hoping they get their scaling correct before the heat death of the Universe.
I appreciate the thorough response. It is rather surprising to hear a view that most players have little to no interest in the story beyond the baseline Blizzard provides to give enough context for a sprint toward level cap. The RPG part of the game seems difficult to appreciate if you don’t have a firm understanding of your character and the world in which they reside.
From the comments in this thread, it appears the prevailing view is that it is only a small minority of players that desire to experience WoW’s lore in a deeper way. Even if a mode akin to Loremaster Mode were to be implemented, it would appeal only to a minuscule subset of the playerbase and resources spent on its development and maintenance would be better spent elsewhere. It is an unfortunate reality that I will have to accept. It is comforting to know that there are others like you playing the game
I noticed this during the current Turbulent Timeways event when I did the Firelands raid and the Black Temple raid this week. I recently read the Illidan novel and was really hoping for an exciting, difficult fight through the Black Temple, fighting his vengeful demon hunters and army of demons and fel orcs. But we cleared it without any difficulty and it made this awesome villain seem like a joke. When old content is this trivial, it takes away any gravity from the events and communicates to players like me that it and the lore within it doesn’t matter.
I have heard of this interaction from guild mates, and it is why I have yet to complete the pre-launch questline. It was frustrating in TWW (e.g., Anduin’s story stemming from his past actions that I’ve yet to witness, discord between the Bronzebeard family, K’aresh and the brokers), and hearing of this particular interaction is what pushed me to more seriously go back so I can appreciate Midnight.
For the record, I am in a similar position and have been going back and forth for months on how to experience the 20 years of content available. I have teetered back and forth on my plan. One, using Chromie time and locking XP, to do every single quest and not being kicked out. However, that means being stuck in the conundrum of trying to complete dungeons and raid content as part of groups. I went so far as to map out each expansion’s character race and class that I would quest with, then used the Remix to prepare low level characters so I have full 32slot bags and starting gear.
Then I teetered back to just going through every single quest and dungeon from every expansion on one character, so I do not have to worry about dungeon scaling and quests or splitting reputation across so many characters (this came up because reputation seems be a core component of the new housing system). Of course this seems like a really boring track. just one shot everything by looking at it, for 20 years worth of quests? meh.
TLDR: I am thinking at this point … even having ANY of these options is pretty cool. If this were a normal game, we would be locked into how it played, when it was playable for one story at a time, then start over. We would probably run into even getting some of the older ones to boot and run without crashing. *****
**** it was me trying to revisit old games and crashing issues that led me to check if WoW was even playable any more
The fact that the content is accessible at all, is what is leading to your desire to access it the way you wish.
Anyway … I am about to commit to my loremaster goal soon.
