T w e n t y S i d e d

World of Warcraft has a story problem. It has had for a long time, and very few changes made in the game have helped. The re-arranging Blizzard did to make older content “leveling options” until you reach level 60 has, arguably, made things just a bit worse. Now that I’ve dinged 60, let’s look broadly at WoW’s story and how a new player will likely NEVER know what’s going on.

Let’s revisit, starting from the beginning. For all intents and purposes, here is my main at the beginning of the game:

Blizzard gave me a nice set of matching Felsoul armor, for some reason or other. They didn’t do that for any other character I created, so I guess it was a “welcome back to the game” offer. I thought it was free Heritage gear at first. I’ve never had Heritage gear before, so I didn’t know what tells to look for that would have indicated such. But no, it’s just level-appropriate matching gear. Or rather, max-item-level for your character’s level-appropriate gear, which makes a difference. World of Warcraft power levels are based on the “Item Level” of your equipped gear. Having really good gear for several levels really helped flow through the leveling. It was only when I switched over to The Burning Crusade somewhere around level 15 that I started noticing my power levels dropping; I had out-leveled my gear. This stabilized a bit as I got random drops and quest rewards in TBC, although after finishing Hellfire Peninsula and Zangarmarsh I started wondering if I had been paying as close attention as I should have when equipping quest rewards. I did finally go get a gearing add-on that would recommend which items to equip for my build, which started helping me get back on track. I chose to level in Terokkar Forest next, and at least was able to keep my gear competent with my character level. UNFORTUNATELY I chose to move to Blade’s Edge Mountains to finish the run to 60. Why “unfortunately?” I had forgotten in the years since the last time I was in Outland that Blade’s Edge has very few gear rewards…most quests reward only money (and rep, like most Outland quests.) Great for my bankroll, which is quite prodigious at this point; not so great for keeping my equipment updated. But that’s a future problem. I also forgot how much I hate the quests in Blade’s Edge Mountains. The region has WAY more than its share of of multi-step quests, most of which work thus:

Travel to The Circle of Faffing About

Kill 30 Warp Snarflers to attract the attention of the sub-region boss, Globbot the Perturbed

Defeat him to obtain his Cherished Box of Snax

Take the Cherished Box of Snax to Bloody Ditch in Fatbottom Wash

Use the Cherished Box of Snax on Dire Snarfler Matriarchs to cause them to lay Dire Matriarch Hatchling Eggs

Collect 15 Dire Matriarch Hatchling Eggs and take them to the Lightly Blazing Inferno at the far north end of Dustbuster Hold

Place each egg near a Dustbuster GutBuster Ogre

While the Dustbuster GutBuster Ogre eats the egg, play this rare, unique Matriarch Hatchling Call flute that I’m giving you now, that has a 15 minute lifespan before it disintegrates and you have to come back to me to get one of the millions of copies I have of this rare item

This will cause a Hatched Dire Matriarch Hatchling to erupt from the egg and attack the Dustbuster GutBuster Ogre.

The Dustbuster GutBuster Ogre will panic and drop its Bowl of Disgusting Breakfast Cereal.

Pick that up. Do this 15 times. Bring the 15 Bowls of Disgusting Breakfast Cereal to me.

That’s ONE quest. The quest giver will then try the cereal, pronounce it TRULY disgusting, then give you ANOTHER quest with this many steps probably for the purpose of fooling someone else into trying the disgusting cereal, until a few hours later you reach the end of the quest chain and you’ve made a ton of gold and hopefully found a few useful items of gear, but probably not because that just doesn’t happen in Blade’s Edge Mountains. Also, definitely in-need of visiting a transmogrifier; here’s level 60 Cinderlynn:

I was around 80% through Blade’s Edge Mountains content when I dinged 60. I had been waiting for this moment to see what happened next since I was leveling in The Burning Crusade via “timewalking.” Well, turns out what happens is Chromie (remember Chromie?) pops up in your head and basically thanks you for trying Timewalking, she hopes you enjoyed your experiences in {enter location here}, but now it’s time to come home and do REAL content. You have ONE LEVEL to finish up what you’re doing and then use the magic portal device that suddenly appears in your inventory to magically transport you back to the Horde/Alliance capital city. Thing is, while you still get experience for one level, I certainly have more than ONE LEVEL’s worth of content left, so I just abandoned all my quests and activated the portal device back to Orgrimmar. In Orgrimmar, I popped into existence in front of Grommash Hold (basically the seat of government for the Horde; the equivalent of Stormwind Keep in Stormwind for the Alliance.) In front of me are three quest givers: a Horde herald (no idea if his name is Harold, though) offering the starting quest for Battle for Azeroth, Highlord Darion Mograine of The Ebon Blade, a technically neutral faction offering me the starting quest for Shadowlands, and Calia Menethil offering the quest “Call to Lordaeron.” My understanding is this is a short questline that takes place at the end of Shadowlands and before Dragonflight. I’m not sure if I’m seeing this quest specifically because Cinderlynn is Forsaken or if it’s available to everyone. Calia, by the way, is the older sister of Arthas (the former and game-famous Lich King), survivor of the Scourge, and now undead Forsaken thanks to a death by Sylvanas and a rez by a friggin’ Naaru, the extra-dimensional beings of Holy Light that were introduced as the big guns brought in to oppose the Burning Legion by The Sons of Lothar in events preceding The Burning Crusade. She’s also very likely the future leader of the Forsaken now that Sylvanas has finally moved on the deal she made at the end of the Third War when she tried to end her undead life and was instead saved for mysterious purposes by the gatekeepers of death. Oops, sorry, did I bruise your brain with that giant brick of loredrop? Trust me, I had to reference Wowhead to keep everything straight, too.

But that brings us the the MAIN topic this week: the story problem. But also, here’s a map of Outland so you can check out the places I mentioned:

Probably most of you know that World of Warcraft isn’t, in and of itself, a beginning to the story. In the beginning, of course, was the Blizzard-developed game Warcraft: Orcs & Humans. This real-time strategy game is pretty reminiscent of most other RTS games, although at the time it was one of a few titles on the cutting edge: two sides, you can play either side, each side has basically the same units and buildings that only look different. The story was very light…in fact a lot of the game’s story didn’t exist until the sequel, Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness was released and basically had a lot of “yeah, this guy here was that guy who did that one thing in the first game.” Warcraft II received one expansion, Beyond the Dark Portal, followed by an even bigger sequel: Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos. While the original game at least retroactively lays some important foundational lore, the things we would see in World of Warcraft really started taking shape in Warcraft II. Beyond the Dark Portal is the most-direct antecedent to World of Warcraft‘s first expansion, The Burning Crusade (although it also affects other areas of the game). Warcraft III has most to do with World of Warcraft‘s second expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, although again, creates a lot of the lore sprinkled throughout the game from the start. Now, this is just the lore for most of the active NPC’s and player factions…there’s a whole component that underlays ALL OF THIS that has to do with creation myths (and truths), extra-dimensional higher-powers, the creation of the universe, traitors, faction-shifting…and quite a bit of retconning done over the past decade. To be completely fair, the retconning mostly has to do the fact that early lore was based on…not much at all, and more recently the writers have had to fill in the blanks. And sometimes the blanks were the wrong size. But you know, you don’t know ANY of this when you’re just starting the game, and you shouldn’t NEED to know.

Back to the story problem. Let’s start from scratch. You create a new character. If this is your FIRST CHARACTER EVER, you start in the “new” starting area, Exile’s Reach. This is a shared area that tells the same story and works the same way for EVERY new character. Doesn’t matter what you create. Once ONE character has completed Exile’s Reach, subsequent characters can choose to start in your race-faction’s traditional starting area, or the shared, universal starting area again. If you start in the traditional area, you will get a short introductory video that was put in place in the Cataclysm expansion, unless you’re one of the later-introduced races, which will have newer videos and starting zones. Just being as forthcoming as possible. The lore you are given in the video will broadly be compatible with the original starting area; but if you choose Exile’s Reach you can just forget all of it as irrelevant.

The new starting area has representatives from all of your alignment-faction’s member races and involves you being part of a group shipwrecked on an island. You play through the island to the story’s end, which will likely be around the time you reach level 10 or 11. You and the NPC’s are then rescued and you are transported to your alignment-faction’s capital city. If you choose the race-faction starting area, you will level in the starting area until around level 12 for classic characters, although you can technically leave at any time you want. You gain access to timewalking content at level 10, if that’s what you want to pursue. This could happen before OR after you leave your starting area in classic content. In Exile’s Reach, of course, you are stranded until you finish the content. High-level “races” like Death Knights and Demon Hunters have their own starting experience before gaining access to the world. Goblin, Worgen, and Pandarans likewise are “locked in” until they complete their starting story. “Allied Races,” a feature added to the game in Battle for Azeroth, can’t be unlocked as a feature until at least one character reaches level 50 (wiki says 40; I noticed the quest at 50. But it could have been there for ten levels). Each allied race is then added via a quest line, and any character created as an allied race has a locked, race-specific starting area as well.

EDITED: SO YOU’RE LEVEL 10 AND WANT TO KEEP LEVELING…BUT HOW? Option One: If you started in your race-faction starting area, keep taking quests wherever you are. Every region of the game will have some quests, somewhere, at some point, that will point you to another region to go level in. If you started in your race-faction’s traditional starting area, the quests will continue, mostly; to make sense, as all of these areas AT THIS POINT will look the way they did starting with the Cataclysm storyline. You WILL notice some odd things, although keep in mind I haven’t played EVERY second of content available. This biggest thing I’ve noticed is in the capital cities, which you will be required to visit sooner rather than later. You will even have to talk to your alignment-faction’s leader at some point. You will notice, oh; two or three of them sitting on top of each other, or scattered around the room, because different expansion’s versions of them are technically available in multiple versions of the room you’re in at the moment. For the most part, the quest markers will point you to the right one, although pay attention to your quest text, in case they start talking crazy about things you know nothing about. Yet. You can get to level 60 doing this in only minor discomfort.

Option Two: For those races that started in the universal starting area OR in a unique, protected area; you will be transported to your alignment-faction’s capital city, AND be *prompted* with a quest to start Battle for Azeroth content. I talk more about BfA below, but something from a comment should be added in here: going straight to Battle for Azeroth after doing the tutorial area probably isn’t the worst you could do. A new player will defintely notice there is an awful lot of lore just simmering under the surface of everything…but none of it is NECESSARY. And I mean that in the most generous way possible; of course you NEVER *have* to know the lore to play a game, but starting your journey in World of Warcraft with Battle for Azeroth may actually be a good idea. If you are starting Alliance-side with the Kul Tiras content, you are immediately going to want to know what’s up with Jaina Proudmoore…and that’s going to rabbit hole you all the way back to the RTS games. On the Horde-side, you are confronted with a slightly-less-obvious hook: Warchief Sylvanas Windrunner seems a bit out of place in Grommash Hold in Orgrimmar, AND you run into an old Orc in prison in Stormwind that everyone treats with respect, who would rather REMAIN IMPRISONED by his worst enemies than return with you to Warchief Sylvanas. So what’s this guy’s beef with Sylvanas? And of course, that rabbit hole’s you through the entire history of the Horde back to the RTS games. And certainly a lot of this is going to come up by the end of this expansion, considering A) I already know what’s up with Jaina Proudmoore, and B) not only do I know how Sylvanas became Warchief and the history of that particular job, I know what she’s about to do and (more or less) why. And as a side note, as a Forsaken fan, I’m not going to ever hate Sylvanas AND I’m looking forward to the future of the Forsaken in Lordaeoron under The Pallid Lady Calia Menethil. Dark Lady Watch Over Us All.

Option Three: TIMEWALKING. Here there be dragons. I mean, literally, they’re all through the game and two expansions are pretty dragon-centric. At level 10, you can run straight to Chromie in your alignment-faction capital, and choose to start leveling in any time-version of World of Warcraft. This comes with a lot of caveats, so be aware. The timewalking version of an expansion doesn’t start you from the very beginning of the STORY of that expansion. That is, taking The Burning Crusade as an example, you don’t learn about the re-opening of The Dark Portal in the Blasted Lands and you don’t go through all the preparatory quests that made up a lot of the Blasted Land’s content. You just get dumped ON THE OTHER SIDE of the portal in Outland. If you have never played the story, you will have NO IDEA what is going on. I would assume most players, especially returning or long-time players, won’t care about that; they already know everything, or at least everything that matters to them. But a NEW player I would imagine is going to be completely freaked out. Not that it’s unplayable, of course; all classic zones adapt to your level; you can run straight in to the battle with demons undoubtedly going on in front you and contribute. You can also probably die pretty quick, if you’re actually new to the game. This is true for Wrath of the Lich King, too; although you do have to arrange transport yourself…which isn’t nearly as easy as it used to be. The ships and dirigibles that once carried you to and around Northrend have largely been replaced with portals, but the directions for transport have generally NOT taken that change into account. Neither, of course, have most of the search results you’ll get when you ask Google how to get to Northrend from Undercity. Again, not a problem for long-time or returning players, but new players are going to find it extremely frustrating to try to gain access to the famed WotLK content.

Cataclysm content, as I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, is weird. Default quests in classic areas are, technically, Cataclysm quests. But if you choose to timewalk CATA content, the notice board Chromie directs you to will give you options to visit content most-directly tied to Cataclysm world changes; plus some other stuff that I’m still not sure in what way it connects to CATA. The bottom line for all of the early expansions is that they were written for players that had reached max-level in the game. They were written for people who knew all the things that had already happened. Content in the expansions makes reference to the early parts of the game and builds on them. If you come into these areas at, say, level 11; having just started playing, you are REALLY going to be lost. Choosing to level in Mists of Pandaria has unique issues that I talked about last week and won’t bring up again. It is useful to note that the story problem actually does shift after MoP, mostly for the better, at least narratively.

Warlords of Draenor creates an alternative past for many events and characters in World of Craft. Not talking about that right now. Something it did VERY right is the introduction. Once again, it makes MORE sense if you’re starting this new story at max-level, as you are supposed to be “the GREAT CHAMPION” of your alignment-faction. Something that just doesn’t sit right if you choose to level here at level 11 in a timewalking campaign. You certainly don’t feel like the GREAT CHAMPION; you barely feel comfortable in your own armor. But setting that aside you get launched into a non-stop, action-filled romp that will likely take you through one or two level-ups before you feel like you can stop and breathe for a while. And despite being so heavily tied into long-running lore, WoD does a good job of presenting all this lore from a newcomer’s point of view. The Alliance-side version of the story especially ties you to some new characters, so that you are learning a lot of important info at the same time they are. The Horde-side of the story is more aligned with fan-service content, but I want to be clear I don’t mean that in a negative way. The Horde-side story is compelling back-story, although it requires a bit more familiarity with traditional lore to get the most out of it. At this point, my conclusion is that, unless you are starting a Pandaren, either level in your traditional race-faction starting zone or go to Warlords of Draenor. You’ll feel a bit out of place at first, but you’ll find interesting characters you get to grow with…especially starting out low-level. Within reach of suspension of disbelief, anyway.

I’m going to move on to the next expansion, Legion, by jumping forward again a bit. As I detailed earlier, upon completing a timewalking campaign in The Burning Crusade at level 60, I was returned to my alignment-faction capital city. There I was given choices to start the expansions Battle for Azeroth, which follows Legion; or Shadowlands, the expansion after Battle for Azeroth. Also I had the option to visit a later event in Shadowlands (at least as far as I understand it currently.) That is, in the LIVE GAME the opening stories for both of these expansions are still available OUTSIDE of timewalking. Maybe this changes tomorrow, maybe it’ll still be that way at least until the next expansion hits, but at the moment I would definitely recommend starting those expansions through those quests…I chose to engage them sequentially and immediately got to go through story content that preceded the content I received when I chose Battle for Azeroth via timewalking. I will assume, for the moment, that the same is true of the Shadowlands content.

This leaves Legion. I have actually started Legion with one character. It starts very much like Warlords of Draenor, although it doesn’t handle things nearly as well. While WoD at least has the setup of being a small, under-prepared, grab-who-you-can incursion-gone-wrong, the Legion beginning adventure has you, the CHAMPION OF YOUR FACTION joining multiple race-faction leaders, including some of the most famous heroes in WoW lore, in repelling a newly-discovered attack by Azeroth’s age-old enemy, the Burning Legion (hence, the name). I felt VERY out-of-place as a level 11 monk running along beside Arch-druids so-and-so and whosit, and King this and King that, and the super-boss-mage who usually doesn’t do anything. And of course it all ends for naught and a major character gets killed saving everybody. It’s well done, but I really felt like my level 11 shouldn’t have EVEN BEEN THERE. BUT…I haven’t done ANY Legion content other than the action-packed beginning, so I’m going to have to hedge my commentary.

The Legion opening sets up some very important story elements that affect the game for the next few expansions AT LEAST, although one commenter recently mentioned that my perception of being a faction-story-heavy expansion was incorrect, and most of the expansion is actually class-specific. I’m looking forward to seeing how that works, although I’m not entirely sure how I’m going to work it in. See, something I haven’t tried yet is leveling somewhere WITHOUT using timewalking. Now that my timewalking campaign ended with Cinderlynn, could I just head back to Outland? The quest notifying me that my timewalking campaign would HARD-END at level 61, automatically transporting me back to my faction-capital didn’t say anything about choosing a different timewalking campaign in the future. This is an element I need to explore soon. This was really driven home to me once I started Battle for Azeroth with Cinderlynn. I had access to things that had not showed up in my timewalking versions of BfA, in addition to the additional content I mentioned above. Some of those things were quest pointers to TWO other questing areas that I’m assuming were part of Battle for Azeroth, but aren’t part of the timewalking experience. So…I’m guessing everyone will be getting content about that pretty soon. Plus Heritage armor. I am officially on the hunt now to obtaining my first full set, however I can. I mean, there’s only many times you can do the Zuldazar quest-line, and I’ve done a lot of it several times. See everyone next week!

Paige Francis He/him