Hey adventurers! I’ll try and make this brief and to the point.
I’ve missed out on expansions from Mists onwards, so I’m trying to play through purely for story. I’ve just about finished the MoP story with horde and looking forward to moving on to WoD.
Stuff that really matters to me though at this stage, is faction stories and what’s different between horde and alliance story. I’d like to experience both horde and alliance plot points, essential and important stuff that happens across each expansion for both sides.
As I mentioned, I’m just about up to date with MoP on horde, how would I go about knowing which parts are important on alliance without repeating the same quests I’ve done for my horde char?
Was even perhaps thinking of doing the Cataclysm campaign on alliance as I missed that trying to catch up with horde side.
Any ideas or if anyone could point me in the right direction of fast tracking story would be appreciated.
For Alliance in MoP it is really just the start of Jade Forest up to the part where you go visit Cho at Dawn’s Blossom. The story after that is mostly the same as it is for horde. Adding to this would be the setting up your factions base in Kun’lai, the pools of life chains in Krasarang Wilds and finally the Operation Landfall chain from patch 5.1
MOP: The only relevant bits that are different is Jade Forest then Krasarang Wilds for the 5.1 faction-different storylines. Can get started with Isle of Thunder, there’s some minor faction differences between both but it’s hardly worth it as the key scenes are shared and the climax is the same scene.
The Wrathion quest chain was removed and thus can longer be experienced, unfortunately.
WOD: Intro zones are different but that’s pretty much it. Despite it all, I’d recommend playing on Alliance if you’re just trying to enjoy the narrative because there’s a lot more fluff to the side-quests. For example, an important character on Alliance might die while on Horde the mirror to that quest kills off a Peon.
The Khadgar quest chain was removed and cannot be experienced, unfortunately.
Legion: Pick any class and enjoy, faction irrelevant. The class campaigns are fun but I’d recommend Demon Hunter or Paladin for more “main character” story-lines that have a narrative line that goes through the entire expansion.
BfA: BfA gets a lot of well-deserved flak but the faction differences are massive and it’s definitely worth experiencing both sides, there’s very little cross-over until the ending patch narrative/Heart of Azeroth stuff.
I know you say you’re primarily interested in the faction stuff, but WoD has rippling effects that seem to have forced Blizzard into radically altering the cosmology, and it’s key to have that knowledge under your belt, or most things won’t make sense—even the faction stuff that you’re into. WoD’s lore is perhaps the most consequential in the history of Warcraft, in terms of the effects it has had on the lore.
In short, WoD is set off when a Bronze dragon “stabilizes” an alternate universe (AU), which then gets connected to ours (the MU) via the Dark Portal for the entirety of WoD—such that “our” Outland is not accessible through the portal for that expansion’s time. It’s implied that uncountable alternate realities are created naturally every moment, but it takes a herculean amount of effort to make one even meta-stable for more than a moment, so the only universes we have to worry about are ours and this one AU.
This AU was created such that it is the same as ours, but it is offset in time by a few decades, so it takes place during the Rise of the Horde era, and on old Draenor. The key is: this is not traditional time travel, but DBZ-style time travel, involving a totally separate universe
Now, the big point: the Twisting Nether (and the Shadowlands, and presumably the other higher-level planes of existence) “transcend” all universes, meaning there is only one of each. As a result, each demon is unique to the multiverse, there is only one Burning Legion, and the Legion that inevitably attacks AU-Draenor is the SAME one that we know, with the same demons and all. Beings native to a high-level plane like the Twisting Nether are only permanently killed if killed in that plane.
Singular entities and planes that transcend all universes are now central to the WoW cosmology post-WoD, for good or ill, so it’s super key to understand how they work. There are some logical flaws with it, but they get steamrolled over in the lore and it’s assumed you just have to ignore them. This will all come back in repeat when you get to Shadowlands, and presumably following expansions.
Stormheim has the only exceptions (that I remember) to this, specifically the intro quests and some quests near the end of the chain, but there will be a lot of overlap with the horde with the neutral (Valarjar) quests in the middle. (And the end, for alliance, felt a tad clunky to me)
