So I have been playing wow since launch. NEVER played any warcraft games before the MMORPG. Was curious for someone like me who feels like i played without paying attention to lore and now wants to learn about it what is the best way to do this? I see a lot of videos out there but what about the warcraft franchise? I was told by someone that if I played warcraft 3 I would learn a ton of lore that leads up to the MMO game? Is that accurate? What about warcraft 1 and 2 and so on? Anyo0ne can point me in the right direction I want to learn it all from scratch.
Just go for it. WoW Lore was made by RTS warcrafts SĂ©ries.
A ton of lore was retcon’ed, but still a nice way to catch the basic lore. It is a cool game too.
Watch compilation videos of the warcraft cinematics. That’s enough to get you up to speed.
Just a warning, Warcraft lore is vast and complicated.
The RTS games are where Warcraft was born.
WC1 tells the story of the fall of Stormwind and the arrival of the orcs to Azeroth.
WC2 tells the story of the Horde invasion of Lordaeron and Quelthalas.
These 2 games are rich in lore but their game mechanics are obsolete but if you like vintage games you can play it, if not just watch walkthroughs on YouTube.
WC3 feels like a WoW prequel because what happened in the game affected the lore in WoW and the storyline in Vanilla is just a continuation of WC3. The game tells the story of the fall of Arthas and Lordaeron. The rise of the blood elves and Thrall and his new Horde.
If you like to read, there are a lot of books/comics you can buy. There is also the Wowpedia.
Also on YouTube you can watch Nobbel87 videos. Also wowcrendor and Doronsmovies. Those guys are lore specialists.
1 Like
Warcraft III had a lot of influence on WoW, since a lot of people worked on both and I believe WoW was in early development while Warcraft III was being finished. If you take a look at the major characters in WoW, a lot of them were first introduced in Warcraft III.
I second the recommendation of Nobbel87’s videos if you are interested in video explanations. He’s very good at picking a particular subject and covering the lore for that subject across all sources, including comics and books that may not be easy to find.
The Warcraft games began everything- WOW, the books, everything. As it stands, they represent an ultimately small piece of lore and help establish some of the current characters. Some of the prominent characters we see in WOW today- Thrall, Jaina, Malfurion, Tyrande, and Sylvanus- all had origins in Warcraft 3.