Honestly I’d make the main rooster of character smaller and more active with their factions
For example I’d be keeping Vol’jin, Cairne and Thrall as the main gang for the Horde PC while the Alliance has Jaina, Magni and Tyrande with additions every two expansion at said cast
Also instead of fighting our own races at dungeons/raid we’ll be helping to expand settlements while fighting old threats like the demons left from the previous invasion and old gods raising.
Everything after Wrath? Yeah, Imma just get rid of that.
I would change things so we stopped fighting the cosmic architects of all creation and have more grounded stories, preferably where the PC isn’t the Maw Walking, Titan Slaying, Legion Banishing, Time Traveling Champion of Azeroth.
This might be a weird change, but I’ve always thought there needed to be more time between TFT and the beginning of WoW. Enough time to set a standard of “uneasy peace,” rather than that just being a brief window between games. The lore in this game moves crazy fast (it’s been 33 years in game since WC1 apparently) and I’ve always thought that was a weakness in the story. I think if it had been, say, 15 years between the end of TFT and the beginning of Vanilla that would’ve allowed for more creative freedom.
I’d also have shuffled stuff around a bit, had humans start in Theramore and trolls in Stranglethorn, for instance.
I’d leave Thrall as Warchief back during Cata. He was such an interesting and likable character before the whole shaman savior phase. Even now he’s in this 30s still very young and was already trying to retire!
Doing so would also pretty much rewrite every expansion since then, not having the crazed Warchief roulette. Which isn’t my main intention, but I just think it’d have been more interesting to leave Thrall’s non-tyrannical Horde intact, but still have the Alliance/Horde conflicts and greater outer threats. A Horde you could support!
Anyways, so yeah I’d rewrite Thrall to keep his Warchief position and remain a warrior/shaman. The elements would have no issue with that, no reason to go to Nagrand. Then roll with whatever domino effect happens afterwards.
You could also continue exploring garrosh with this becoming tempered over time with the right tutelage.
I would close the story of Warcraft up until Wrath of the Lich King.
Then… expand the Lore and the bigger other Cosmic Stories to Single base games similar to Skyrim, Dragon Age, Baldurs Gate 3, Witcher etc…
There player would actually plays as the main REAL hero… and can interact, have romance with the main cast of WoW old and new NPC’s, change the cosmo etc at small but interesting deep stories to slowly expand the WoW Universe.
Then have a bit crossovers with WoW faction content of things left behind with such stories for “adventurers” to explore, mess up or clean up. lol
I would include such small stories as part of the subscription and expansion purchases of WoW. So as players wait for online content, they can just play does if they want… as their intro to the new conflict.
I know, I know, impossible that crazy or unrealistic… but hey this is just me talking if I had the FULL standing and back up of Blizz entertainment without any strings attach to the… sigh*
Well you get the idea… lol Its just silly Sunday/Monday talk… and I’m going to bed. 
I’d retcon humans into being mushroom men.
Probably 1) Garrosh becoming warchief and 2) Varian dying. Game would be considerably different.
This is what we’re going to do tonight? We’re going to make me write a massive post at midnight? Okay…
To be entirely blunt, the lore in Warcraft lacks anything near to stable worldbuilding. Without worldbuilding, nothing set in said world can have consistency or rules to go by, which in turn impacts character actions and cultural nuance for the very races. I’ll address the main issues here, at least the ones I see. I’ll be going under the assumption that we’ll be handling only the pre-Wrath races.
I. Passage of time and racial ages
Warcraft’s timline is all over the damn place. Things either happen way too soon, or over way too long a time, or are all squished together. They have no set dates for many things, it seems, and step on their own toes a lot. In addition, some races live way too damn long to be relatable.
Humans: Ages are fine, but the creation of the kingdoms is all over the place. Current lore seems to indicate the Arathi Empire lasted for at most a century before Gilneas broke off, and then in turn Kul Tiras broke off from Gilneas. This makes very little sense. I would change it so that the Arathi Empire for 700 years or so, before starting to break off, with Stormwind being the very last one to do so, not 1200 years ago, but around 600 or so. This lends more credence to why Stormwind couldn’t get help, as it was considered a young and backwater kingdom.
Orcs: Ages and timelines are generally fine, more intact than the Draenei anyway. Them being fully grown mentally and physically by age 12 or so is a unique fantasy aspect, I don’t see much issue with it so long as it’s made very clear that they are in all respects adults at this age and not… physically grown but with more childish minds because that’s… not good.
Tauren: I’d have them live longer than other Horde races, and I’d also have the war with the Centaur be a relatively recent thing, within the last 30 years. Tauren themselves I think should live into their mid-100s on average, which was their age in some prior lore.
Trolls: Largely okay with their timeline and ages.
Blood/High Elves: This is the big one, honestly. Elves in Warcraft quite frankly live too damn long. Warcraft has some of the longest lived elves in fantasy, and this impacts their ability to be relatable as well as logically fit in with certain story beats. I would have them max out at 400 years old, and honestly would change Anasterian being the king during the Troll Wars. Have it be his grandfather and make him 500 or so, still abnormally old.
Draenei: Another big one, the implication that the bulk of the Draenei race is 20k+ years old is insane. My retcons and changes would be to have them ‘rise’ on Argus 25k years ago, be a society and such for 12k years, flee Argus 13k years ago, and the reason many remember Argus be because they spend so much time in stasis. Make their max age 600, and the reason Velen looks so old is because he spent lot periods out of stasis to watch over his people.
Night Elves: Could go one of two ways. Either have them keep their immortality and be very old, but with some counters (which I’ll explain below) or have Nordrassil give them eternal youth and immunity to diseases, and not immortality, maxing out their ages at about the same as Draenei. This would mean no Malfurion and Tyrande though, and no Illidan, unless they weren’t in charge/alive during the War of the Ancients.
Dwarves: Dwarf timeline is fine, their ages need to be settled on though. I would personally have them hit later 100s before dying, older than Tauren but not by much, for the sake of parity. This would allow for Dwarves now to have had grandparents that fought in the War of Three Hammers, though I’d push that back as well, to 400 years ago.
All the remaining races I don’t have much issues with their ages or timelines, though if there are outliers please tell me.
II. Culture
Humans: Mostly okay, but more emphasis on what the culture of the EK before the First War was like would be much more welcome. For Stormwind, I’d do something a tad drastic… I wouldn’t kill off Onyxia/expose her. In fact, I wouldn’t have Black Dragons be inherently evil, just selfish. Have them discover her plot, but her grip on the House of Nobles is so strong that it would fracture the kingdom. Give her a vested interest in keeping Stormwind in her ‘hoard’, which sets up a conflict with Deathwing later. She’s the most successful villain in WoW history and they killed her off just to basically have Wrathion become what she could have been. More emphasis on the House of Nobles would be way more interesting than an absolute monarchy anyway.
Orcs: Revert to pre-Cata and Chronicles and WoD lore for their culture, flesh it out, add new trials, rituals, sacred sites, etc.
Tauren, Trolls, Dwarves: Flesh out what they have already. Tribal politics, Troll Nation politics, and Dwarven thanes and the senate all are able to craft some very rich lore with tons of quest fodder.
Blood Elves: Flat out do not have them restore the Sunwell. Maybe they learn their lesson about eating naaru for Lite-Bright powers but keep them as the pragmatic and ruthless survivors. Culturally and narrative-wise that makes them much more interesting, unique, and in line with the Horde.
Forsaken: Maybe more lore on their chain of command, make them less reliant on Sylvanas(though I wouldn’t have her turn evil anyway so the point is moot).
Draenei: Revert to TBC Draenei lore, more emphasis on darker aspects like the Auchenai.
Night Elves: I would, quite frankly, scatter them. No Teldrassil, and very few centralized towns, if any. Make them far less centralized in terms of authority, far fewer in number, and more libertarian(I realize that’s a loaded term). Far more emphasis on their more feral aspects, with each small kaldorei group being fairly self-sufficient and isolated. Make the Wardens an actual police force, as well. This makes the Night Elves highly specialized, with each one able to have a wealth of experience and knowledge, but also far more vulnerable outside of their forests, mitigating the sheer advantage a nearly immortal life can have.
I have more but that’s already way too long. To change any story I feel that there needs to be a solid base of worldbuilding and Blizzard doesn’t have that. What I wrote above is only a small portion of how I would fix each race, but uh… it’s a lot.
TL;DR: I write way too much about imaginary races and how their lore needs to be fixed before the story can be.
I’d have prevented the push to make so many major characters the literal faction leaders. This mainly started in MoP onward (but also Cata), where every race has a leader who needs to appear on the front lines to be relevant. Prior to that, there were often leaders who did this, such as Sylvanas or Jaina, but that was a piece of their personality and leadership style, rather than a requirement to be a leader.
I’d much rather see more leaders like pre-BfA Lor’themar, where he does take part in efforts at times, but is primarily a ruler of Quel’thalas while other faces take the front line face. I don’t think Liadrin was executed perfectly in that regard, but the concept of her being more the battlefield commander without being the faction leader was very good.
No WotA with the human, the dragon AND orc. No retcon.
Night elves neutral race or 3 faction.
I have enough sense to say that the story would get worse if I could change anything. Not one to praise the Blizzard. But hey I dont possess enough arrogance to think I could do any better.
I’d rewrite the entirety of BFA to meet the following.
You guys know most of my broader opinions, so I’m going to post something (that should be) noncontroversial:
DKs get Frostmourne instead of the Toothpicks of the Fallen Prince.
https://i.imgur.com/ob9G1tV.png
Now this! I can get behind. Very good idea, 10 points to you sir.
Things I would personally change…
2)More worgen content naturally.
4)Stop villian batting the horde and no more killing off their heroes/leaders every other expac.
5)Keeping the cosmic stuff in the background, the Old Gods for example were more frightening when blizzard let the players imagination run wild.
Without a clearly defined scope of changes it’s hard to put a finger on those. For the most part I would rather prefer to see more “effort” / clarity in what is told above the rest.
Like, there are hints that Yrel story is not that simple. But because of the execution it is perceived as her following crazy zealotry path instead of a logical helping us during the Legion.
Same with Azshara. We have hints like a phase name “my palace is a prison”, not leaving it for so long, that some even thought that Xavius completely usurped the leadership, and some of actions that we can see her doing (like trying to bargain the lives of Zin-Azshari people to keep them alive after the Sundering) pointing out that what we know about her could be more of “unreliable narrators” portraying only one side of her character so far.
So, if those characters will be placed back in the story, instead of showcasing that there is more than was revealed, it could seem like retconning and justifying terrible persons, mostly because the game failed to express the details with more clarity.
Speaking of what I would like to see… Well, not much really, I would not change too many big things and would prefer to leave the devs with as much freedom as possible. A few possible things would be:
Calia Menethil more clearly placed in the alliance camp;
explaining the val’kyr story from their point of view, as well as how could they (if the for whatever reason would be willing to serve her after all) like Sylvanas when the forsaken do not really like Arthas (the way Dark Mirror portrays their interactions make it seem that Sylvanas treats val’kyrs just like Arthas approached the forsaken when they were under his control)
actually committing to either placing factions and their tension as the core of the story, or not wasting resources on it at all. Want to have conflicts? Cool, but then retire the “we need each other” part from the story. If the story should be about “only together we can fight for the greater_good™”, then keep faction battles as just small scope unhappy accidents, result of misunderstanding, etc.
add more flavour texts about how different races / factions (including neurtal ones) feel about the in-game events. A dozen extra pages per expansion should not be impossible, but a few words here and there can help immersion quite bit.
admit that doing logical things is not what makes the story boring. And relying on plot twists and plot reveals does not automatically make it great or enjoyable.
it seems that the way the devs place story elements is based on where they want it to go. But the players only see how it is building on top of currently presented elements. So, the problem is that those things are not obligated to intersect. So, it would be nice, for interviews and when picking the characters / events for the story, to consider if that would make sense based on what is already known.
personal gripe - Veiled Hand. IMO the entire thing was a mistake. Just go to one of thebest alliance location, kill the characters who are suddenly evil after us helping the place, ruin the stuff, and leave. No resolution, no nothing. Big “thanks”.
if the devs want “morally grey” characters, IMO the main problem is not justifying seemingly bad things. It’s the existence of the right and obviously good opitons. If those can be a thing, everything else seems to be bad in comparison to different degrees. Jaina siding with the horde was portrayed as a good and correct thing, so everything else should be constidered bad. There is no chance for “morally grey” stories with such approach. If she would have to, say, use limited forces to either save her homeland from invasion or save horde rebels, then there could be something. As is… why even pretend - I don’t know, looks like a waste of development resources.
There are many more “but why” moments, but the post is rather long as is.
gl hf
It’s a big issue with Warcraft specifically, but in general fantasy writers are way too cavalier with throwing around huge lengths of time. Just like how sci-fi writers will talk about something being X and X light years away without actually comprehending how freaking far that is.
The worst offender in the Warcraft universe is probably the Amani trolls “building up their numbers” for four thousand years. Four. Thousand. Years. That’s all the way back to the beginning of civilization in Mesopotamia.
Where to start? I would declare all of WoW not canon and start after WC3 again.
But that’s not possible, so.