Which Installment of WoW Provided the Best Story?

[Prokne]

That's because they never foresaw what the Warcraft Universe was going to become when they made their little game Warcraft:Orcs & Humans. It wasn't meant to be what it is today. All the people that rage over retcons need to take a break. They had to make the story fit somehow, and I think they tied it up nicely. I am glad they have moved on to original content again. It helps to progress the story, not break it as many naysayers would have you believe.

Retcons are the lazy way to make their new story fit with the original. They really arent necessary at all since all you have to do is make a new character to fill in the story gaps. Also most of them were probably perpetrated by the people who write the novels because they think its more interesting.

[Dasani]

I think burning crusade did the best job personally.

In vanilla the story felt like it was all just so random... All these zones, each with their own little problems done in a self-contained way with no real effect on anything beyond that zone. The raids were all completely unrelated to each other and full of villains we'd never seen or heard of before. Etc.

In TBC however, we got to goto outland and fight the "bad guys" from warcraft 3. We fought kael'thas, vashj, and ultimately illidan. I wouldn't say it's WOW story was anything all that profound or amazing, but it was a continuation of the story that began in warcraft 3. Ilidan took over the black citadel in outland, locked up Magtheridon when he took his place as ruler, and just camped out with kael'thas and vashj all that time.

It was great. You had naga and blood elves all over the place doing their own little things all for the main unifying purpose of serving illidan. You also had the demons that were sworn to illidan serving him in shadowmoon valley as well. Nearly every boss in the expansion was taken from warcraft 3.

Gruul they made up.
Kharazhan was the home of Medivh, who was in WC3.
Magtheridon was from WC3.
Kael'thas was from WC3, Vashj was from WC3.

All of the caverns of time raid was just a recreation of the final battle in Warcraft 3 vanilla, including the hero units of the scourge returning as bosses you face.
Black temple brought back even more characters including Illidan, Akama, and Maiev. Even Teron Gorefiend who made his debut in Warcraft 2!

Then even after all that, you goto the sunwell to ultimately face Kiljaeden, also from Warcraft 3.

I mean the entire expansion felt like celebrity deathmatch.

And aside from boss battles, you got a bunch of orc history and such since that was their homeworld, you got to see Rexxar again (also from warcraft 3) although he was in vanilla he just wandering around in desolace doing nothing useful.

All in all, it was great because it was just such an epic throwback to the RTS games. Vanilla's bosses were all made up on the spot just for WOW and seemed completely random and arbitrary. Then after TBC when you move into Wrath of the Lich King, it was going to be all about wrapping up the bit with arthas and the scourge, but was kinda lame because you had all these pointless raids full of crap they made up on the spot before you ever even fought arthas. And the one other character they brought back, Anub'arak, was just a 5-man boss that insulted prettymuch everybody who was looking forward to him returning and being epic. Then when TOC came out (worst raid ever designed btw) they lobbed him in there as the final boss to try to make up for that, but he didn't even fit or make sense there and it was also such a huge, ridiculous disparity in power from where you could easily KILL him in a 5man vs needing 10 or 25 people where he was much, much stronger with many more abilities.

Another lore failing in wrath IMO was them farting out the vampire elves and de-emphasizing death knights' power. Death Knights were always commanders and generals in the scourge along with liches. Baron Rivendare in vanilla was a good example of what a death knight should be, an awesome end boss with tons of minions under his command. But in wrath, they farted out these ridiculous vampire elves out of nowhere and claimed they were like scourge lieutenants and held all the power in the scourge second to arthas and all this other nonsensical BS, then they had Death Knights running around as common trash enemies that commanded no troops, not even their own petty summons. Then they had the "Freed" death knights that served darion mograine be completely inept pansies and even made daily quests out of rescuing them from wooden cages. Ridiculous. They messed up all the DK lore in wrath as far as i'm concerned.

Then you have the fact that Arthas was in your face every 5 minutes in Wrath. Seemed like every other quest he'd pop out of a portal, shake his fist and be like "I'll get you next time !" then run away. It was so unbelievable and irritating. He might has well have been a companion character that just followed you around and commented on everything you did.

I could go on about cata and MOP, but i've said what was important about TBC being the best for story.

[Garnier Fructis]

I have never felt more involved in the story than when we killed the Lich King.

[Dezarus]

Have to go with either Wrath or Vanilla here, leaning Wrath...

[Wilian]

Wrath > MoP, in that order.

Won't list vanilla nor TBC as they didn't really have consistent story per say and were more about exploration and helping out with localized issues with few non-related larger arcs in the end.

Cataclysm was so plain shit it doesn't deserve to be ranked.

[Wildmoon]

WotLK the xpac that shit all over WC3's scourge story line. If you actually played WC3, you will know what I'm talking about. Anub'arak and Kel'thuzad who should have been major villians of the xpac and tied heavily into quests then lead to their epic raid got trashed over by Blizzard. WotLK was the xpac with the most potential to have the best lore because it got the most famous villians but Blizzard destroyed it themself. As WC3 fan I feel so sad about this wasted potential. If only Blizz writes WotLK's story the way they are writting MoP's story then it would have been epic.

[Jilor]

WotLK the xpac that shit all over WC3's scourge story line. If you actually played WC3, you will know what I'm talking about. Anub'arak and Kel'thuzad who should have been major villians of the xpac and tied heavily into quests then lead to their epic raid got trashed over by Blizzard. WotLK was the xpac with the most potential to have the best lore because it got the most famous villians but Blizzard destroyed it themself. As WC3 fan I feel so sad about this wasted potential. If only Blizz writes WotLK's story the way they are writting MoP's story then it would have been epic.

Exactly what I was talking about. I think people confuse the best story with their favorite xpac. The story was terrible.

[Ryuuki]

WotLK had a lot of established lore from WC3 to build on. Knowing the lore already, the expansion was grea for me lore-wise. But the way the lore was presented I find still comparatively weak to MoP. The Shieldwall Offensive and the Wrathion questchain completely hooked me lorewise.

[Sivick]

Wrath of the lich king definitely provided the best over-arching storyline, though i have to say on the small scale, the quest line with Lili and Chen Stormstout, some of the best quest based storytelling i've ever seen. Especially if you kept lili as a companion and cleared most of the zone with her.

[Prokne]

WotLK the xpac that shit all over WC3's scourge story line. If you actually played WC3, you will know what I'm talking about. Anub'arak and Kel'thuzad who should have been major villians of the xpac and tied heavily into quests then lead to their epic raid got trashed over by Blizzard. WotLK was the xpac with the most potential to have the best lore because it got the most famous villians but Blizzard destroyed it themself. As WC3 fan I feel so sad about this wasted potential. If only Blizz writes WotLK's story the way they are writting MoP's story then it would have been epic.

Well they ruined the KT story by putting the Naxx raid in the game too early in vanilla. It should always have been a Wrath raid and they could have made a different one for vanilla or released TBC earlier. I think Anub was shafted after they couldnt do the Azjol Nerub zone. Its still better than TBC where they made all the best characters villains and forced you to kill them.

[Yourcatdead]

Arthas is my lover.

[Sivick]

Well they ruined the KT story by putting the Naxx raid in the game too early in vanilla. It should always have been a Wrath raid and they could have made a different one for vanilla or released TBC earlier. I think Anub was shafted after they couldnt do the Azjol Nerub zone. Its still better than TBC where they made all the best characters villains and forced you to kill them.

Originally Azjol Nerub was supposed to be an entire underground zone but that proved a little ambition at the time and an underground zone got put on the back burner till cataclysm. It would have been neat to see and would have given Anub'arak a better story. Oh well, at least he got to be the end boss for an entire raiding tier. Though I would have put anub'arak at the first tier and left KZ for second to last tier, but they couldn't do that since they had already put naxx out in vanilla and since nobody WENT to naxx they redid the dungeon, but because it's a redo and you can't have a redo as the second to last raiding tier they put him first.

All that aside, the story was never about the lackies, it was always about arthas, and in that respect it did not disappoint.

Lets be real, vashj was always a villain, and illidan was always an anti-hero at best. Kael was the real interesting story in BC, he went from trying to protect his people to a magic addict trying to feed his need. Feeding on those demons corrupted him and his followers and led to his downfall. I found it perfect that he became a villain.

[Immitis]

everyone who voted for bc is either lying or just plain dumb. however im tired of always having to explain to the people who never played warcraft 3 or who dont know anything about lore why it was so fucking awful. so from now on whenever it comes up im just gonna post this

burning crusade is easily the worst.

illidan? ruined. kael'thas? ruined. draenei lore? retconned. eredar lore? retconned. sargeras origin lore? retconned. me'dan? caused by the burning crusade. garonas origin story? retconned. naga collecting swamp water? never explained. khadgar? old Alliance hero, did nothing but sit with a windchime and cry about medivh while neutral. alleria and turalyon? didnt even show up. their son? did nothing but walk back and forth asking for his parents.

burning crusade had so much potential but it was wasted horribly. they fumbled over storylines and ruined good characters for the sake of having flashy names as raid bosses and basically retconned huge swaths of lore because they thought it was "cool" and wanted to give the alliance a demon looking race.

mists lore is like a Shakespearean magnum opus compared to the writing in burning crusade

[Wildmoon]

Originally Azjol Nerub was supposed to be an entire underground zone but that proved a little ambition at the time and an underground zone got put on the back burner till cataclysm. It would have been neat to see and would have given Anub'arak a better story. Oh well, at least he got to be the end boss for an entire raiding tier. Though I would have put anub'arak at the first tier and left KZ for second to last tier, but they couldn't do that since they had already put naxx out in vanilla and since nobody WENT to naxx they redid the dungeon, but because it's a redo and you can't have a redo as the second to last raiding tier they put him first.

All that aside, the story was never about the lackies, it was always about arthas, and in that respect it did not disappoint.

The story was about Arthas but Kel and Anub were the major villians who played big part in WC3's story line. They were not even there in quests.

[Immitis]

The story was about Arthas but Kel and Anub were the major villians who played big part in WC3's story line. They were not even there in quests.

still loads better than bc lore.

[Rendia]

Retcons are the lazy way to make their new story fit with the original. They really arent necessary at all since all you have to do is make a new character to fill in the story gaps. Also most of them were probably perpetrated by the people who write the novels because they think its more interesting.

Ok, then Sargeras would be just another demon. The single biggest baddie of the game would just be another low-ranking demon of the Burning Legion. In fact, would the BL even exist?

All we need is MORE characters in a story with many? It can be a pain to keep up with what is there as it is.

I try to think of it as less retcon and more that we didn't know the whole story yet.

[CHNurf]

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.

Yep, 100% agreed. They didn't even do too much with the whole "New Plague" thing beyond what happened at the Wrath Gate.

As for my vote: MoP.

[Destil]

still loads better than bc lore.

^

I get the nostalgia and scope of BC's potential with story, but I still don't understand the main plot of it.

[Totle]

Favoreite/Epic story lines

Vanilla:
- Onyxia revealed, Grand Masquerade, Varian Missing, Defias line
- Scourge Invasion, Naxxramas, Stratholme line
- AQ, opening the gates, C'thun mythology
- Abercrombie and Morbent Fel - old Duskwood

BC:
- Gorefiend questline?

WotLK:
- Wrathgate,Battle for Undercity
- Death Knight starting experience
- Frost trolls eating Loa, Troll Empire
- ULDUAR, Stormpeaks
- ICC, Arthas/Lich King

Cataclysm:
- Waking the Ancients, Firelands
- various zones and changes to old world

Pandaria:
- Shado-Pan monestary, Taran Zhu, Sha of Hatred line
- Operation Shieldwall, Divine Bell storyline

OVERALL: Wrath of the Lich King had the most appealing story lines and my most favorite one (Wrathgate/Undercity).

Vanilla would be a strong second place due to a fantastic storyline that stretched over the entire human questing experience: from the gnolls and murlocs of Elwynn and Redridge to the Defias in Westfall and Theramore, to the Dark Iron dwarves and Marshall Windsor, to Onyxia herself and eventually Nefarian.

Pandaria is a strong third with fantastic stories and dynamic questing, but much of the same story is spread across the entire continent making it come across as repetitive. Except for Valley... As someone who has slaughtered dragons and repelled demons, I did not appreciate being used as a farm hand.

Cataclysm will take fourth place because it's only redeeming storyline was Hyjal and the following Firelands portion. Trolls came out of nowhere and the rest of the higher zones were too isolated to have much story cohesion. There were many parts of the revamped leveling zones that I liked, but not enough to help the failure of the higher zones.

Burning Crusade was just terrible. The story lines were choppy with out much of a conclusion to the zone. There wasn't any real theme to the zones themselves save for various questing hubs. In terms of lore relevance, the only place that actually seemed to matter was Hellfire Peninsula, Shadowmoon Valley, and the Isle of Quel'Danas. Everything else was superfluous and uninteresting.

[McNeil]

Most faction leaders have their own story, along with them expanding into major storylines in 5.2, AND 5.3 might bring the rest of the faction leaders into the fray.

The background and history of the Mogu.

The mysteries beneath Pandaria.

The Sha and their origins.

The Mantid and their Origins.

Yshaarj.

The fate of multiple specific characters in certain villages throughout Pandaria.

Those 2 Pandaren in the Pandaren starting zone who everyone pines for because their story was awesome.

Chen Stormstout's background and progress through Pandaria.

The Klaxxi.

The downfall of the Empress and infection of the Dread Wastes.

The development of the Shado Pan's leader going from a stubborn leader to one who accepts outsiders.

The background of each August Celestial.

The Saurok and their uprising.

I have way too many more I can name.

But yeah, you get the idea.

I can name about the same amount of stories WotLK has:

Introduction of the death knights in the Scarlet Enclave and their origin

The betrayal of the Lich King, with the Ebon Blade leaving the Scourge

The forming of a new faction, the Argent Crusade. With the return of Tirion Fordring

The vrykul and their origins

The blue dragonflight and their origins

The continuation of the Scourge storyline

Arthas

Yogg Saron

The Kalu'ak

The Nerubians

The introduction of the Oracles and Frenzyhearth, and their hostality

Ulduar and its titanic watchers

The Taunka

Major characters like Bolvar, Saurfang, Tirion, Darion, Jaina, Sylvanas and Muradin get some lore progression


There's just as much, but the thing is whether you like the stories from either WotLK or MoP more. And thats just personal opinion.