I really want to play world of warcraft’s story from the beginning but I’m unsure what the beginning even is. Is there a specific race you have to start with or race doesn’t matter and it’s just a specific quest? Also, do expansions continue from the last mission in the main story mode? I wasn’t able to find any YouTube videos explaining the story mode and so that’s why I’m asking I want to play everything this game has to offer but also learn every lore within it.
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Race doesn’t matter. The only different is each race have different story in the beginning. Expansions doesn’t start with the last mission. Mostly the story of this game are separated, not much of main story here.
So I would just play any race, and then once I finish that race’s story mode I move onto whichever is the first expansion pass, or something along those lines?
Yes, but if you are new here. You must follow the line for once. (I don’t know what is it on this expansion but used be Battle for Azeroth). After one of you charater hit 60. Your next charaters can freely choose what content you want to play.
I always assumed that since everyone talks about how deep the lore for wow is I thought that there was a coherent story mode. Also since we’re on the topic, what are all the expansion passes and the preferred order to play them in?
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Yes, there is many lore. But I don’t think there is a real story mode, sorry.
I think you should follow the time line. Or just do what expansion attracts you the most.
There are quite literally tens of thousands of quests in the game. Far too many to get done on one pass through the game.
Each zone has leveling limits. Brining up the map and zooming out to the continent level will allow you to hover over a zone and see the level range for a zone.
Once you have a character at level 60, you can visit Chromie in either Stormwind or Orgrimmar and opt into Chromie time for any expansion except Dragon Flight.
Chromie time will allow you to level 10-60 in any given expansion. All the zones in the expansion will scale to whatever your current level is and zone leveling ranges don’t apply.
Some new players use a work-around to get into chromie time before they actually level a character to 60.
The workaround consists of creating a Class Trial character which is a temporary character that will be level 60.
They then visit Chromie on the character they want to level in an expansion through Chromie time and pick the expansion they want to level in.
Once that character has visited Chromie, it’s a good idea to delete the Class Trial Character. You can only play them for a couple of hours before they become locked and unusable.
Each expansion carries it’s own story. This is a good thing because the story from the beginning is VERY long. Technically, the order of the expansions is…Classic, BC, WotLK, Vanilla/Cata retail, MoP, WoD, Legion, BFA, Shadowlands, Dragonflight. The classic zones were updated with the Cataclysm expansion, so a lot of those stories/quests went away. You can do them in WoW Classic, which is included with your subscription. If you use the skip Nok mentioned to get access to Chromie Time, you can then start anywhere from BC forward in Chromie Time in retail. You can use multiple characters to level through, there’s way too much content for one character unless you lock your XP.
It is very hard to play WoW in chronological order. (The game prioritizes newer content for phasing, which ends up requiring a fair amount of experience with WoW quests to work around.)
Also, it’s a lot of work. I did it on a Horde character back in BfA and I think it took me a year to get through — and that was with years and years of WoW experience backing me up.
It’s really better to look at WoW as a collection of stories and to not worry about doing things in order.
However, if it’s something you want to attempt, I posted this almost two years ago:
It’s not updated for Dragonflight, but most of the information is still useful. Some of the most important changes off the top of my head:
You can now Chromie Time to 60. The Dragonflight quest becomes available at 60, you it’s probably best to lock your level at 59.
I’d also lock your level at 49 at least until you finish Mists of Pandaria. (BfA messes up some zones and staying below 50 will minimize the impact.)
Just be aware that the BfA levels are weird now (I haven’t had time to figure out what scales to 50 and what scales to 60, and I suspect that Blizzard is still sorting that out.)
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I honestly don’t mind how long it takes I just want to play every expansion because I’m bored with other games and so that’d be a great time spender. I’ve already downloaded wow classic and I was going to download wow WotLK once I’ve finished the main story for classic wow and then retail after that. I’m just unsure which quest starts every expansion so that I can know where to go and plan out my journey.
Every expansion has a breadcrumb quest on the Hero’s/Warchiefs call board located in SW and org and most inns.
To see them all, accept each quest you see until you get to the expansion you want to play as you work your way down the board.
Accept that quest and abandon the others.
You can go right into Wrath Classic and skip Classic Era if questing is your main goal without really missing anything. The original Classic quests are still in tact in Wrath Classic, and you get some quality of life upgrades in the game. The main thing you miss out on is two of the level 60 raids (but you’d need 40 people to do then in Classic anyhow) as they are upgraded to level 80 in Wrath Classic.
In fact, outside of the Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor zones, most of the rest of the quests are still available in the retail game. You lose two more raids — Zul Gurab and Zul Aman. The biggest questline I can think of that is lose between Wrath Classic and Retail is the Karazhan attunement chain. (It’s actually pretty cool, so might be worth checking out in Wrath Classic. You’ll probably need a friend or two for some of it, even at 80 in Wrath Classic.)
For the starter quests:
Keep in mind when getting quests from the Hero’s Call/Warchief’s Command board, sometimes you have to “dig” for the one you want. It will only show 3 at a time, so if you start picking up quests, it will keep showing new ones. (Then just abandon the quests you don’t want.)
Burning Crusade
I’d start with the Blood Elf or Draenai starting zones. Just head to the starting area for the Blood Elves/Draenai. You won’t be able to get the first few quests unless you’re playing a Blood Elf/Draenai, but you can pick up the Inn courier quest at the entrance to the starting area (Sunstrider Isle/Ammen Vale) which will lead you to your first quest hub.
Once you’re ready for Outland Proper, you can get a starting quest in a few ways:
- You can choose Outland/Burning Crusade from Chromie and she’ll give you a quest.
- You can pick the Outland option from the Hero’s Call/Warchief’s Command board.
- You can talk to the Thrallmar/Honor Hold mage in the portal room to get a port to Hellfire Peninsula and there will be a quest giver not far away that can get you started.
For Northrend:
First, take a tour of the Death Knight starting area (either in Wrath Classic or Retail.) Make a non-allied race/non-Pandaran Death Knight and play through the starting experience.
Here are your options for starting Northrend:
- You can choose Northrend/Wrath of the Lich King from Chromie
- You can pick up either “Howling Fjord” or “Borean Tundra” from the Hero’s Call board.
- You can take the boat/zepplin to Howling Fjord or Borean Tundra and just start picking up the quests that are available when you land.
For Cataclysm:
For the revamped “classic” zones, I find the best way is to head over to one of the racial starting zones and just follow the quests through their natural progression. Then pick another and repeat the process. Then just hit up the Hero’s Call board for any zones you’ve missed. (Felwood seems to be the main one that doesn’t have a lead in from another zone.)
You can also hit up the Worgen and Goblin starting zones by creating a character of those races and picking the racial starting zone (not Exile’s reach.) The Goblin story is pretty self contained, but the Worgen one is tied into the Horde quests in Silverpine forest. (So, it’s worth doing both to see the whole story regardless of your faction.)
When you get to the high level Cataclysm content (Hyjal, Vash’jir, Deepholm, Uldum, and Twilight Highlands) you’ll need to use the Hero’s Call board. Start with Hyjal and Vash’jir. (It doesn’t matter which you do first.) You’ll get lead to Deepholm and Uldum from the natural questing progression, and then will need to hit up the Hero’s Call board for Twilight Highlands.
For Mists of Pandaria:
First, check out the Pandarain starting experience by creating a Pandaran character and choosing their racial starting zone (not Exile’s Reach.)
Then, for the high level content your options are:
- Chromie for Pandaria/Mists of Pandaria
- Choose the Jade Forest option from the Hero’s Call board.
Warlords of Draenor:
Either
- Chromie for Draenor/Warlords of Draenor
- Choose the Tanaan Jungle option from the Hero’s Call board.
Battle for Azeroth:
Pick up the quest from the Herald NPC standing next to the Hero’s Call/Warchief’s Command board.
Shadowlands:
Either
- Chromie Time for Shadowlands
- Pick up the quest from Darion Mograine outside of Grommash Hold or Stomwind Keep.
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Sorry to necro an old post, but is this still the best way to do it?
New player who has been playing SoD and decided to try to get the rest in chronological order.
As of right this moment, everything in the original post should work. But, changes are on the horizon.
When Wrath Classic progresses to Cataclsym Classic, Classic Era will be the only option to see the original Vanilla quests. Cataclysm Classic should still have the Karazhan quest chain when it comes to missing BC content in retail. The Wrathgate scenario that caps of Dragonblight questing from Wrath of the Lich King won’t be available anywhere once Wrath Classic progresses.
We also don’t know exactly how stuff will change in retail when the War Within pre-patch comes out. My understanding is that Dragonflight will become the default leveling experience, but we won’t know what the means for phasing issues until the time comes. We also don’t know if they’ll rescale non-Chromie Time BfA content back to 50 cap instead of the hybrid 50/60 cap it has now. We’ll probably know more about that when it hits beta, but sometimes leveling changes don’t make it into the betas until later on.
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Perfect I’ll get started on the wrath classic server. Thank you !