For the sake of clarity I will note that I, myself, am not a new player. I’ve played WoW more or less continuously since Cataclysm, never missing an expansion during that time. Before that I was a big fan of Warcraft 3. So for me, a love and understanding of WoW’s lore has come naturally, and more often than not I love seeing it fleshed out and developed in game.
However, recently I persuaded my wife to give WoW a go, and she had some feedback that changed my outlook on WoW’s new player experience a bit. In short: she felt the story was unclear, very suddenly involving high stakes and confusing plots she didn’t understand.
Exile’s Reach was straightforward enough. But then, straight to Boralus. Suddenly she had a lot of questions. Who the hell’s Jaina? Why the hell am I under arrest? What’s a Theramore? She felt like she went straight from fresh-faced adventurer to close confidant of the King, and felt like a lot of story beats were not properly explained.
Which, to be honest, is fair enough. For someone like me who’s been actively engaged in WoW’s lore for over a decade, I get it. I know what Theramore is. I know who Uther is in Shadowlands. I know what happened in the patch content of BFA, so it doesn’t feel weird to me that we jump straight from fighting a war against the Horde to working together against the now-former Horde Warchief in the realm of the dead for some reason. But new players are likely left confused, and thus, unsatisfied.
There should be an in-game mechanism, I would suggest either during or after Exile’s Reach, to succinctly explain what actually happened in WoW’s history. We cannot expect new players to read Chronicle or religiously delve into the depths of Wowpedia before the game has even had a chance to really pique their interest, you know?
So my suggestion would be something like this: an NPC on either Exile’s Reach or in Stormwind/Orgrimmar after its completion who is a “loremaster” or something to that effect - something clearly marked out. If it’s Lorewalker Cho I’ll probs dance for joy but it can be anyone. That npc should have a variety of dialogue options that spark short animated cinematics, not unlike the Warbringers and Afterlives series (though they don’t even need to be as long) that briefly summarise every expansion, in full. So, for example, one such dialogue option could look like this:
“Remind me what happened when the mists around Pandaria parted?”
~animated short commences~
“Garrosh Hellscream, Warchief of the Horde, launched a sudden and brutal attack on the Alliance City of Theramore, utterly destroying the city in the process. After this, with the Alliance and Horde engaged in total war, a previously unexplored continent named Pandaria, inhabited by the friendly Pandaren, was discovered. Alliance and Horde adventurers scouted out the continent to prepare the way as their fleets converged upon the continent. As War broke out, the Alliance sought to contain the dark and destructive power of the Sha, while Warchief Garrosh of the Horde sought to use it, even trying to murder Chieftain Vol’jin of the Darkspear Trolls for trying to stand in his way. While brave adventurers worked to defend Pandaria from other threats, such as the wicked Mogu and their Thunder King, factions rose up within the Horde dedicated to bringing down the increasingly tyrannical reign of Warchief Garrosh, who had started to actively purge dissidents from the Horde, proclaiming that the orcs alone were supreme. Eventually, the Alliance worked with these Horde rebels, who called themselves the Darkspear Rebellion, to attack the Horde capital of Orgrimmar and bring an end to the reign of Warchief Garrosh, placing him under arrest. Vol’jin was chosen as the Horde’s new Warchief, and the Alliance and Horde agreed to peace… for now!”
Now I’m not a spectacular writer and I’m sure there’s lots to pull apart in my little summary, and please do. But something LIKE this being implemented would go an awful long way towards making the game’s story accessible. It fills in the blanks we tend to miss by not doing patch content in our leveling experience, and it provides the bones of context so that if the interest of new players IS piqued, they’ll then WANT to get a hold of the Chronicle Books, check out Wowpedia, play through old patch content and so on.
So yeah, just a bit of story-related feedback that I hope the devs see I guess lol. If anyone has anything to add, subtract, or attack me for, please do