I apologize in advance if one is already created as I could not find. If so, please post link and i’ll take a look. If its what I am looking for I will delete this thread or close.
I have been playing wow off and on just before TBC dropped. I have had a couple accounts but I am an unintentional altaholic. I don’t stick long with a characters. To try and attach myself and be more committed I have decided to Start a character and Progress in chronological order. I have seen only a few posts when searching and they don’t really do a good job at how to progress. I want to make sure I progress in the right order as well. This is my plan so far. I will stop EXP at 47 to not get the issues with Shadowlands and Chromie boot.
I created a Draenei to start. I can then easily transition from finishing the Draenei starting zones to TBC. From there I will do Wrath of the Lich King (WTLK). here Is where I will then go back and do the Azeroth Quests which will lead me into the Cataclysm. I believe after this its pretty much a straight shot with each expansion. Since you could technically have Draenei and blood elves easily transition straight into tbc do to thats the expansion they came out in. This should help with smoothing story lines.
So for easier order:
Draenei starting areas.
Straight into portal for TBC
Straight to WOTLK
Azeroth Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor (probably start with night elves area)
Northen Barrens > Southern Barrens (They don’t have to be one right after the other, but do Nothern Barrens first.)
Alliance:
Teldrassil > Darkshore > Ashenvale > Stonetalon
Redridge Mountains > Burning Steppes (The natural quest flow has a lot of stuff in between these zones, and I’d follow the natural flow. This is a case where the two zones are importantly linked, but story wise it feels like some time has passed between them, so doing other stuff in between makes sense.)
Then rest of zones
Cata Zones
Straight to Pandaria
Straight to Draenor
Straight to Legion
BFA
Shadowlands
My question now is there any zones in Kalimdor or Eastern Kingdoms that should be done prior or during that If I go straight into (Unless Stated) that could end up missing something or be back tracking. I understand do to Vanilla being wiped by cata there might be some issues, but minor holes created im not to worried about. any specific zones that should be done prior or after that could be missed would be greatly appreciated.
Update: I made the mistake on another character of not EXP locking at 50. while you can still do the quests, its one shotting and a web of quest messes as all quests pretty much become available in that area. Only exceptions are ones that require quest paths. I have found that you can enter and leave Chromie time at lvl 49. You must quickly abandon the quest to Icecrown for Shadowlands and select the Chromie timeline of your choice. It might take a try or 2 but you can re-enter Chromie time. The Shadowlands quest will still pop after, but you can just untrack it.
No, those got updated too. Everything in Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms was changed in Cata.
One of many reasons that I think the original Vanilla zones and quests should be added back into the game as a Chromie phase. I think it’s bad storytelling to have a chunk of the game’s history be unplayable.
OP your timeline is correct except for this. Basically start with BC and go forward.
I believe everything was altered as Briselody said. However, some zones have phases I know blasted lands is one and Darkshore but that is for Warlords and legion changes.
Thanks Briselody, I will remove number the comment " 3. Believe there is an area before WOTLK in Eastern Kingdoms but may be changed do to cata)" and move list down one.
Cata changed all of the Eastern/Kalimdor zones (except Silithus), so there’s no real progression other than where you want to go. And with the level squish from SL, you can pretty much pick Chromie Time and run whatever quests you want up until SL.
Classic would have been so much better as a Chromie option for a new character and at level 60 given the choice to lock said character in Classic mode or move the character to Retail.
For BC and Wrath the locked character would be reset to level 50.
This would have allowed access to the mounts and gold from a player’s account.
For the low level Cata zones (the ones you can start before 30) there are a few oddballs timeline wise that can feel a bit weird in any timeline:
Silithus was not really updated. The end game quests were removed and there was some minor streamlining, but it’s still Vanilla era quests. (However, as it was mostly an end game zone, stripping those has made is so that what is left doesn’t have much story.)
Dustwallow Marsh is largely unchanged from its TBC update. (It was unfinished in Vanilla, and so the updates are still largely just fixing that and don’t move it into the TBC timeline.) There are some light updates to superficially bring it into the Cataclysm timeline.
Arathi’s quests are cosmetically changed and streamlined a bit, but are still basically the Vanilla quests dressed up a bit for Cataclysm.
Desolace is a hybrid zone, with some completly new cata story stuff mixed in with old Vanilla stuff (with some minor streamlining.) As the remaining Vanilla quests were pretty evergreen, it’s generally only weird if you’re familiar with them from before Cata.
As for the general flow of the rest of the Cata updated zones, your best bet is to follow the natural flow of the quests. Only go to a zone if you’ve picked up a natural breadcrumb from questing in a previous zone as opposed to using the Hero’s Call/Warchief’s Command quests. Most of the ties between zones are pretty superficial, but following that rule largely prevent you from hitting stuff out of order. (I don’t think there’s a natural breadcrumb for Felwood, so for that one use the Hero’s call, and do it before Winterspring.)
Some of the more important zone orders I can think of:
Northen Barrens > Southern Barrens (They don’t have to be one right after the other, but do Nothern Barrens first.)
Alliance:
Teldrassil > Darkshore > Ashenvale > Stonetalon
Redridge Mountains > Burning Steppes (The natural quest flow has a lot of stuff in between these zones, and I’d follow the natural flow. This is a case where the two zones are importantly linked, but story wise it feels like some time has passed between them, so doing other stuff in between makes sense.)
Yeah, the zones do kind of mix vanilla and cata. but believe some can still fit into cata as well. I dont think there is a way to avoid unless the specific quests are called out and jumped but that probably just end up a spaghetti and still end up with quests out of place lol.
So to be clear your suggestion would be as follows:
Draenei starting areas.
Straight into portal for TBC
Straight to WOTLK
Azeroth Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor (probably start with night elves area)
Northen Barrens > Southern Barrens (They don’t have to be one right after the other, but do Nothern Barrens first.)
Alliance:
Teldrassil > Darkshore > Ashenvale > Stonetalon
Redridge Mountains > Burning Steppes (The natural quest flow has a lot of stuff in between these zones, and I’d follow the natural flow. This is a case where the two zones are importantly linked, but story wise it feels like some time has passed between them, so doing other stuff in between makes sense.)
Then rest of zones
Far be it from me to stop someone from enjoying the questing experience of the game, but IMHO, as someone whose done it all, I would suggest more you just get to max level and then do it. You can simply plow through quests faster and get more gold than you will to boot. You can even toss in clearing old dungeons/raids for funsies and to trigger that sense of completion too.
I could do that but I find the questing to be a bit odd and random. they have done that a bit now just in the Draenei starting areas I noticed. It would also require me to skip to shadowlands and then go back. which will throw it out of order as bad as cata already has done lol. for me its not about trying to blast through. more of making it semi challenging but still easy enough. Ill have to lock at 47 then zone out to do old raids and back in. Plan so far.
Fair enough. You don’t need to justify yourself to me. You enjoy your journey to the most of your ability and however you want/can. Just giving you thoughts to consider and to discard if you find them of no value. No skin off my nose either way.
You can turn of Chromie Time and still do that for everything up to MoP at 47. (WoD stuff is also doable, but maybe not on the higher difficulty for the raids.) Heck, questing with Chromie Time on will increase the gold value of the rewards. (At 60 without access to Chromie Time, you’re capped at the expansion level for rewards, with Chromie Time, they scale with you.)
Yup.
If you wanted to do a bit more story completion beyond what is possible with one character, you can also add in stuff like running a non-allied race/pandaran DK through the original starting experience before starting Northrend, and likewise with the Demon Hunter to start Legion and the Pandaren starting area for MoP.
The Worgen starting zone is followed up story wise by Silverpine Forest, so for that complete story you’d start with a Worgen and then take any Horde character through Silverpine.
For a Horde character, the Goblin starting zone makes a good start of Cataclysm.
The way I’d justify that from an RP perspective is that someone in a Tavern is regaling you with stories of their adventures.
