Which Installment of WoW Provided the Best Story?

[Prokne]

The Burning Crusade, hands down. Why? Because the characters were believable. Kael'thas (who was the true villian of the expansion) was a tragic hero. You actually felt his struggle, why he wanted power. His motives were believable. Not to mention the twist with him and Kil'Jaeden was nice and unexpected. It neatly wrapped up the story elements introduced in the Blood Elf campaign in the TFT.

By the same comparison, WotLK was awful story-wise. The character of the Lich King was severely disjointed from the character we met in WC3 and TFT. In fact the story couldn't even decided if it was Arthas, or the LK we were fighting half the time. Not to mention the conclusion, "There must always be a Lich King" was a horrible way to end the LK saga.

Pretty much the entire plot of WC3 was an attempt to display Ner'zhul as a mastermind who engineered his freedom so he could take revenge on Azeroth and the Legion. WotLK completely and totally abandoned that premise and didn't even address Ner'zhul or the union of him and Arthas even once. For continuity sake, WotLK is actually the worse expansion lore-wise imo.

The reason I put Wrath over BC is because they basically ruined the major characters in BC. Illidan and Kael were the good guys and just used the legion when it suited them but no real allegiance before Blizzard teamed Kael up with KJ permanently and made Illidan go insane. We would probably kill Vashj just because she is a Naga but the other two were sacrificed.

I agree that the Wrath lore ignored Ner'zhul which was bad but the LK character was what you expected him to be after TFT. He wanted to raise up the scourge to defeat the legion because they screwed him over but to do that everyone on Azeroth had to die.

[Deleted]

I have to go with Wrath of the Lich King for Alliance and Cataclysm for the Horde. Why do I split the factions? Well, I would go with Wrath of the Lich King for both factions if the Horde actually had a compelling story in that expansion. But I just feel like they didn't really have a purpose to go to Northrend. They could have done so much with the Horde's connection to Ner'zhul and perhaps even Dentarg but they simply left it out. And for Cataclysm, well I'm basing this around Garrosh' story and the war between the Horde and Alliance in the 1-60 content, the raids for max level were pretty bad.

But in all honesty the story of WoW is pretty bad compared to the RTS games.

[McNeil]

Easily Wrath of the Lich King, its not even a contest. It had a villain we could all relate to, Arthas was once like us. He has been build up since WC3, and a little further in vanilla (where he visited Naxx). Basically I think anyone who played WC3 will either vote TBC or WotLK.

The Ashbringer story was simply amazing aswell. It was part of WotLK right?

And lol at MoP having so much votes... Best story my ass

[Venziir]

Easily Wrath of the Lich King, its not even a contest. It had a villain we could all relate to, Arthas was once like us. He has been build up since WC3, and a little further in vanilla (where he visited Naxx). Basically I think anyone who played WC3 will either vote TBC or WotLK.

The Ashbringer story was simply amazing aswell. It was part of WotLK right?

And lol at MoP having so much votes... Best story my ass

Basically I know you are wrong.

[killidan]

1. Burning Crusade had the best story progression.

2. Second would be Lich King. Lich King story was marred by irrelevant Naxx rehash and the disgrace of raiding content, ToC.

3. Vanilla is a close third. The tiers connected well with the pre-raiding content, quests, BRD, LBRS/UBRS, etc. However, the story between MC, BWL and AQ, Naxx is not great.

4. Cataclysm had DW, it was OK. But BoT/BRD, FL, deathwing did not tell a unified story. Each tier seemed unrelated to the rest.

5. MoP has the Sha storyline, which is not good. Panda/Asian storyline sucks ass.

[Pebrocks The Warlock]

Basically I think anyone who played WC3 will either vote TBC or WotLK.

This where you are wrong. I played WC3 and I didn't vote for either of them.

The Ashbringer story was simply amazing aswell. It was part of WotLK right?

Yes it was, but the story was also in Vanilla WoW.

And lol at MoP having so much votes... Best story my ass

Great thing about opinions is that everyone can have a different one.

[Skytotem]

Weird interpretation of story quality on these boards...

[Reyzzz]

The Burning Crusade, hands down. Why? Because the characters were believable. Kael'thas (who was the true villian of the expansion) was a tragic hero. You actually felt his struggle, why he wanted power. His motives were believable. Not to mention the twist with him and Kil'Jaeden was nice and unexpected. It neatly wrapped up the story elements introduced in the Blood Elf campaign in the TFT.

You must be joking, there was next to no story involved in TBC, all the story happened in WC3 and when TBC came out we just went and put the bad guys down.

[Deleted]

classic by far. Quality and quantity.
Wotlk is a decent contender though.

[Deleted]

Wrath by a mile, the whole expansion was tied to the LK, you encountered him and his forces all over the continent, you foiled his plans, you pushed him back, you seiged the citadel and you defeated the most iconic character in WoW....its was great and inaddition to that you had the titan story wove in there, meeting avatar of Freya in Shol, and the whole storm peaks and leading to ulduar the the brilliant Algalon fight and conclusion. Wrath was the best put together period of wow, sure it was not all 100% briliant, but overall it was wow at its best.

TBC was pretty good

Vanilla - lots of good little stories, I liked how they followed through from zones to instances/raids. Like the silithids in the south of EK and the An'quiraj instances, and the dark iron dwarf chains leading to blackrock mountain.

Did cata have a story? seamed a bit all over the place.
MoP - um, isn't the point to not really have one?

[Venziir]

1. Burning Crusade had the best story progression.

2. Second would be Lich King. Lich King story was marred by irrelevant Naxx rehash and the disgrace of raiding content, ToC.

3. Vanilla is a close third. The tiers connected well with the pre-raiding content, quests, BRD, LBRS/UBRS, etc. However, the story between MC, BWL and AQ, Naxx is not great.

4. Cataclysm had DW, it was OK. But BoT/BRD, FL, deathwing did not tell a unified story. Each tier seemed unrelated to the rest.

5. MoP has the Sha storyline, which is not good. Panda/Asian storyline sucks ass.

1: TBC barely had progression nor connection

2: Vanilla had even less connection.

3: MoP has a lot more than the Sha, pay attention.

[Scummer]

Weird interpretation of story quality on these boards...

Care to enlighten us .

[Venziir]

Wrath by a mile
TBC was pretty good

Vanilla - lots of good little stories, I liked how they followed through from zones to instances/raids. Like the silithids in the south of EK and the An'quiraj instances, and the dark iron dwarf chains leading to blackrock mountain.

Did cata have a story? seamed a bit all over the place.
MoP - um, isn't the point to not really have one?

Um, I think you have somehow confused "main villain" for story.

[Chickat]

Wrath had the best story. MoP presents the story the best. If wrath had the in game storytelling of MoP it would have been epic. Pure story though would go

Wrath>MoP>BC>Vanilla=cata

[Orby]

Wrath had the best storylines, MoP is a close second.

TBC was good but I didn't like the idea of Kael going mad and making Illidan killable. To this day I am still dragged about that. TBC was still the best raid wise though.

I am not really sure about Vanilla. there were a lot of mini stories in that, the theme never revolved around one ultimate bad guy. Which is good, some of those mini quest chains provided some awesome stories that got you really into aspects of the World of Warcraft.

Cata was nonredeemable on every front. Awful Storytelling, awful content and the expansion that stopped me playing WoW. It was like the creative department said "you know what, we're going to have the year off on this one, these chained chimps can write the stories for us this time, no one will no the difference"

[Reyzzz]

This thread is hilarious, most of the posters seem to ignore the fact that only wotlk and mop have had proper story progression. And MoP is just getting started.

[Skytotem]

Care to enlighten us .

Well, wrath is far and away the most popular, yet it had Garrosh being irrational, The Lich King with the Ner'zhul personality removed, and Arthas acted like more of a "I'll get you next time Gadget!" villain than a dark and powerful evil mastermind... heck, we had to put Bolvar in place since the scourge was -more- dangerous without him leading them WTF?

While Classic had things like...

http://www.wowpedia.org/Quest:In_Dreams

http://www.wowpedia.org/Loh%27atu

http://www.wowpedia.org/Tauren_mythology

http://www.wowpedia.org/Kirsta_Deepshadow

http://www.wowpedia.org/Rhok%27delar...ncient_Keepers

http://www.wowpedia.org/Altar_of_Zanza

http://www.wowpedia.org/Fallen_Hero_of_the_Horde

http://www.wowpedia.org/Abercrombie

http://www.wowhead.com/quest=8059


Lorewise it was just very rich even if some things like the orcs in ashenvale and dealing with the Forsaken and where the hell Varian went weren't handled well.

I chalk this up to most people not remembering or not having played back then I guess.

But even TBC was better than Wotlk, it had things like...

http://www.wowpedia.org/Oronok_Torn-heart

http://www.wowpedia.org/Pathaleon_th...ator%27s_Image

http://www.wowpedia.org/Kirin%27Var_Village

http://www.wowpedia.org/Varedis

http://www.wowpedia.org/Isfar

So i'm just puzzled as to why Wotlk is seen as so 'overwhelmingly' better than the others storywise, when it had a few more stumbling blocks and the others had some serious merits.

I'm not saying there's any clear cut or flat out winner, but the lack of a more even spread surprises me.

---------- Post added 2013-02-16 at 03:57 PM ----------

Classic had little to no consistent, linear story. There were multiple threats, but it was more "monster of the week".

True, but there were smaller stories and the npcs and quests had more detail and individuality rather than perfect parity.

Look at Belgrom Rockmaul's quests and compare them to most NPCs nowadays.

http://old.wowhead.com/npc=4485#starts

[Granyala]

Story Arc: Burning Crusade.

However in execution of story telling MoP is lightyears ahead of TBC.

[aarro]

Wrath by a million miles.... still the best expansion released

[klaps_05]

WoW was based on Warcraft, and it finished Warcraft's story in Wotlk, so the best story would be the one that started in WC3 in a universe based 4 games before it.