Hello! Long time casual player, looking to see what of the story I can still experience. Is there a list somewhere of the quests that brought you to the various dungeons and Raids in Cata and MoP? I know you can just do the dungeons and raids now, but it feels like I’m missing context for the stuff in between. Especially in Cata.
Thanks in advance
I’m not aware of any simple comprehensive guides.
Here’s what I can think of as the major quest tie-ins for Cataclysm:
In most cases, the zone a dungeon is in will tie in with the leveling quests for the zone. (You’ll often usually get a quest telling you to head to the dungeon at some point as well.) You’ll often not get a direct tie to the dungeon quests, just a general theme tie in. For example, you’ll get a breadcrumb from Hyjal for the Blackrock dungeon, but story wise the connection isn’t much more than Twilight’s Hammer/ Firelands agents doing bad stuff.
The dungeons added in later patches in Cataclysm do have more story lead up. For Zul Gurub, it’s story ties in both to the low level quest content in Northern Stranglethorn and The Cape of Stranglethorn, but there is also a high level Cata questline that was added later. That starts from “Bwemba’s Spirit” from Bwemba (she’s in the Valley of Spirits for Horde, and the Stormwind Harbor for Alliance.) There’s no questing really tied into Zul’Aman, but it’s tied into the Zul’Gurub story in that the Zandalari are uniting the trolls. You actually see more to this story in MoP with some of the Kun Lai Summit quests and the Isle of Thunder zone and raid. (And, you get a bit more doing the horde quests in Zuldazar in BfA.)
The other set is the Caverns of Time dungeons added at the end of Cata (that are storywise the lead up to the final raid). That chain will start with “The End Time” from a bronze dragon NPC in the throne room for Horde or the portal room for Alliance.
For the initial Cata raids, Throne of the Four Winds ties into Uldum’s questing, and Bastion of Twilight ties into Twilight Highlands. Blackwing Descent is really more of a here’s what the black dragons are up to raid.
For Firelands, there’s a whole lot of quests and a daily hub where the story unlocks progressively. Here’s the WoWhead guide for the zone.
And, as already mentioned, Dragon Soul has the Caverns of Time dungeons and their quests as their story lead in.