Which Installment of WoW Provided the Best Story?

[Deleted]

WotLK by far

Then :

Cataclysm > Burning Crusade > Mists of Pandaria >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> classic.

[Trassk]

Vanilla - Not much in the way of major story happening. It was more just getting to know the world, and allowing players to recap on events that had already happened in wc3 and before. Some events like the opening of AQ held some moments, but otherwise it was cut and paste.

TBC - Introducing a lot of newer elements, but also filling in blanks that came from novels and previous games and opening draenor as a place. Establishing things like newer races that become relavent thoughout the developing lore. Sadly, it didn't allow for much development of Illidan, but the set up and fall of kael'thas had more impact, as well as the introduction of kil'jaeden into the game, and wrapping up the sunwell trilogy.

Wrath - Gets a lot for involved storywise, with the development of deathknights, Arthas and the lich king development and fall, Mograine, the rising conflict between horde and alliance and there leaders as Thrall, Garrosh, Varian and Jaina interact. The presence of yogg saron and his impact across northrend as much as the lich king appearing anywhere he wishes over your shoulder. It was also all the minor details along with the major ones that felt like fine brushed details that had there own importance, like the wolver and gorluks, or the Tuskarr, or how the vrykul had there own lore in there lands. Also ended on the best so far ending for a final boss, Arthas, after all his lore, going out with a bang. also the introduction of Varian and Garrosh coming into the foreground.

Cata - Lore takes a U turn and the writers, not having any of the old warcraft 3 story arches to fall back on, begin to experiment with new ideas. A lot of them balled, many were unhappy with Thralls shift from warchief to being this uber powerful shaman. Many minor peices of lore get overshadowed by the major story in cata and so makes the story feel shorter. Nobody gave a shit about things like Tolvir or what was happening under the sea, because one you completed a zone, you have zero reason to come back to it for anything. Even things like bringing dragonmaw into the horde or wildhammer into alliance, so much got wasted on filling in blanks with moronic media parodies in questing instead od developing some story in its place. Also Deathwing was so underwhelming in the end him popping like a balloon seemed to make perfect sense given everything else.

Mists - Seems blizzard may have learned from there mistakes in cata and picked up the thread. Pandaren and there teachings giving a fresh perspective of things, the war between horde and alliance heating up now to full blown conflict and the consequences of that war brought into the foreground. Pandaria not just giving good stories and characters prevalent to the current events, but a history that gives accountable lore to get into as well. The inner faction termoil in the horde boiling up, faction leaders who have been overlooked are now getting front row seats, and a lot of character depth thrown into play.

So, Vanilla was the start of it all so not much to go on. TBC got the ball moving but missed some points it could have improved. Wrath picked up the thread in a huge way and made the lore feel genuinely epic, cataclysm made many mistakes and much like the theme of the expansion things seemed to begin to fall apart, but then mists comes in and manages to save wow lore in the 11th hour.

[LilSaihah]

Put my chips on TBC because the story direction in the other expacs is kinda eh. WotLK paints LK as a buffoon, Cata is... well, it's Cata, and I don't really like Pandaria, even with Domination Point being quite dandy.

[docterfreeze]

Wrath, no doubt.

Ulduar was the closest to the titans we ever got, it was epic, indeed.

[Rainec]

WotLk for me. Just seeing the Lich King every few quests (each scourge quest hub and Drakuru's line)was just plain awesome. Not to mention everything leading up to and after the Wrathgate and the Lich King's swap.

[Khaza-R]

WotLK, it's obvious if you have played Wc3:RoC and Wc3:Tft.

Obvious that was horrible? Because it completely negated the entire plot of both those games.

[ravenshaelo]

Wrath.
I started playing in BC. I had NO IDEA there was an overarching story in vanilla/BC. I didn't even know who the bosses were.
But I loved questing in Wrath, revealing the story and coming across the Lich King a few times before finally killing him on top of ICC.
Cataclysm was meh, and MOP has tuned me out from the story even further - I only PVP now. I refuse to do dailies, so if I want to know what's going on story-wise, I hit up Youtube. Or read the books. :P

[Syio]

Mists is the best for me, followed closely by Wrath.

Worst for me was Burning Crusade. It's a foreign piece of rock that I really couldn't care less about back then as I ever will.

[apepi]

People enjoyed wotlk story the most? I think it would be 2nd for me to bc but it was not all that interesting. I mean everytime you saw the lich king he let you go(then blizzard had some bs that he was training you all along...), uld was pretty good but people seem to forget toc even existed.

[Gavll]

Really, anyone who answered WotLK should be shot..

"There must always be a Lich King" /facepalm

[Deleted]

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.

Read the book?
At the end of wc3, when he sits upon the throne he kills Ner'Zhul and the only thing that makes him humane (in the form of a sick child)

People enjoyed wotlk story the most? I think it would be 2nd for me to bc but it was not all that interesting. I mean everytime you saw the lich king he let you go(then blizzard had some bs that he was training you all along...), uld was pretty good but people seem to forget toc even existed.

Have you ever killed him? At 10% when he kills everybody he says he wanted you to get to him to ressurect you as his greatest champion
That's why he never killed you untill then.


WOTLK is the best by far imo

[Deleted]

Please do put me on ignore. I don't want to see you spew insults or destil to stalk me on forums again.

Mate, you are comming over as massively irrational and with a persecution complex. I did look over your posts when you accused Destil of stalking you....no such thing, and you stated you had called him out on it 3 times....its not in your post record. mate, just drop it, you are just making yourself look a fool.


Back on topic, I think its had for most players to resolve MoP into wow. it just came from so far out of the box that it jsut does not make sense. The whole Burning legion and Lich King story are central to what many of use think of as wow, that going so far outside that just does not feel right. There was plenty of stuff Bliz could have done which was more integrated with wow as established, but they instead went outside teh box as it were and it jarrs a bit.

[Draqson]

might sound surprising, but its not BC (even though BC was my favourite exp); because I think after Warcraft 3, THIS Story made no sense...
Cataclysm didnt really convince me either, might be because I never played WC2 or anything before WC3, thus Deathwing wasnt really a name for me
Mop and Classic are kind of many small stories... they tell the story of the world itself, and stories about the places there... nothing BIG, like:
Wrath of the Lich King... I wasnt a huge fan of that story either, with tournament and Lich King being everywhere making his cameos, but always sparing us... but its kind of the best of the 5...

[Deleted]

I voted for Mists because we have had some awesome storytelling in this expansion.

Wrath also came real strong on storytelling with Wrathgate and the whole Undercity coup questlines.

TBC and Cata both had terrible stories in my book. imo a writer should never ever have to resort to "setbacks" and surprise resurrections as a plot.

Kael was bad enough in TBC, However Cata took the concept to a whole new level with every major end boss from classic except C'Thun making a re-appearance. I remember feeling no drive to take down those bosses because I had already killed them years ago. I felt the expansion deserved its own villains, not rehashed ones.

Classic was worst by having no overall story just a lot of bad questing involving killing x, collecting boar tusks and taking a package to the other side of the world.

[killidan]

I voted for Mists because we have had some awesome storytelling in this expansion.

Wrath also came real strong on storytelling with Wrathgate and the whole Undercity coup questlines.

TBC and Cata both had terrible stories in my book. imo a writer should never ever have to resort to "setbacks" and surprise resurrections as a plot.

Kael was bad enough in TBC, However Cata took the concept to a whole new level with every major end boss from classic except C'Thun making a re-appearance. I remember feeling no drive to take down those bosses because I had already killed them years ago. I felt the expansion deserved its own villains, not rehashed ones.

Classic was worst by having no overall story just a lot of bad questing involving killing x, collecting boar tusks and taking a package to the other side of the world.

So you had problems with resurrections.

How about Naxx2, which resurrected all the bosses without even bothering with a plausible explanation?

How about all the rehashed dungeons that resurrect all the bosses inside without any explanation? Like Scholomance? What does it do to the story? Does it even connect at all? The bosses we killed several expansions ago are suddenly well and alive?

I think TBC and Cata are not any worse than WotLK or MOP in terms of resurrections and rehashes. At least TBC did it in style.

[Khaza-R]

Read the book?
At the end of wc3, when he sits upon the throne he kills Ner'Zhul and the only thing that makes him humane (in the form of a sick child)

That's the problem though. Ner'zhul was no minor character. The entirety of the LK's plot in both RoC and TFT was him outsmarting the Legion and gaining his freedom to take revenge on Kil'Jaeden. In fact, by the end of TFT he was pretty much built up as KJ's nemesis. He pitted his champion, Arthas against KJ's champion, Illidan and won. Why would such a massive part of the LK saga not be represented in game? Let alone be a very small part of the book...

And there is another flaw with WotLK's storytelling. The LK comes across as incredibly devoid of personality or purpose in every encounter with him. He has neither the cruel, cunning of Ner'zhul nor the snarky, arrogance of Arthas. Which begs the questions, why change the story of WC3 at all if you're just going to make something more dull and boring?

[Deleted]

So you had problems with resurrections.

How about Naxx2, which resurrected all the bosses without even bothering with a plausible explanation?

How about all the rehashed dungeons that resurrect all the bosses inside without any explanation? Like Scholomance? What does it do to the story? Does it even connect at all? The bosses we killed several expansions ago are suddenly well and alive?

I was never in a guild that saw Naxx in classic, and as far as bringing it back goes it only worked because only 1% of the playerbase ever saw it.

As for other rehashes, yes I have the same problem with them all. Scholo, SM, the Troll heroics, all of them.

It just breaks the immersion to have the same old bosses alive and well again seemingly unharmed years later with no explanation. Kill a guy and have the Scourge turn them to undead? I can buy that and it makes for an interesting twist as it did with Arthas, Sylvanas and Bolvar if it is not overused. But mass ressurections to fill a boss roster because you are too lazy to create a new guy is just lazy.

[Pebrocks The Warlock]

I was never in a guild that saw Naxx in classic, and as far as bringing it back goes it only worked because only 1% of the playerbase ever saw it.

As for other rehashes, yes I have the same problem with them all. Scholo, SM, the Troll heroics, all of them.

It just breaks the immersion to have the same old bosses alive and well again seemingly unharmed years later with no explanation. Kill a guy and have the Scourge turn them to undead? I can buy that and it makes for an interesting twist as it did with Arthas, Sylvanas and Bolvar. But mass ressurections to fill a boss roster because you are too lazy to create a new guy is just lazy.

But the ones you listed: Scholo, SM, Troll heroics, all pretty much have new bosses. The only thing they did mass resurrection was Naxx, and you gave the reasoning for that already.

[Deleted]

But the ones you listed: Scholo, SM, Troll heroics, all pretty much have new bosses. The only thing they did mass resurrection was Naxx, and you gave the reasoning for that already.

ZA only has one new boss, the others are all old.
ZG, has the return of Mandokir and Zin'do.

Cata, had Nefarian, Onyxia, Ragnaros and Geddon all return from the dead.

Scholo still has Gandling and Barov.
SM, Still has Whitmane.

I'd say all of those named could have been replaced with new bosses and should have.

[killidan]

But the ones you listed: Scholo, SM, Troll heroics, all pretty much have new bosses. The only thing they did mass resurrection was Naxx, and you gave the reasoning for that already.

Rattlegore and Gandling in Scholo.

I did not list Troll heroics.

My point is all expansions have resurrected characters, not just TBC and cata. Naxx in Wrath being the most major example.

I dislike all resurrections/rehashes equally. It destroys immersion and lore, especially more so when it doesn't have a story for the resurrection itself as a rationale.