Which Expansion Told the Best Story?

[Super Dickmann]

I've read both your posts and have no arguments. @Feanoro and @Soon-TM are right.

[Eazy]

WOTLK for obvious reasons.

[FuxieDK]

I'm amazed, after so many years, there are till prople who defend WotLK.. It was NOT a good expansion; Not lore wise, raid wise (except Ulduar), not levelling, zones or dungeon wise.
It was a really crappy expansion TBH.

TBC was as close to perfection as we'll ever see WoW.

[Aeula]

In terms of overarching beginning to end? Wrath. Don’t really like the expansion, but Wrath. Although it’s filled with glaring issues.
I love MoP, gameplaywise it’s my favourite expansion and the Pandaren lore was kinda interesting. But the story surrounding it all was absolutely trash. Garry going insane, Pandaren arresting him (Which kinda ruined them as a race for me). Just ugh.

Personally though I prefer TBC lorewise. I’m not really all that beat up over the likes of Kael, Vashj and Illidan becoming raid bosses (Well worth it for the peak blood/high elven fantasy of killing Zul’jin). It made sense to me seeing their WC3 portrayal. Blood Elf lore was it it’s height, the Draenei ‘retcon’ (Was it really one though?) was one of the few that actually improved the story. I enjoyed the smaller stories dotted throughout the zones. My only sticking point is 2.4 which kinda ruined everything.

WoW never had good storytelling. But once upon a time it had nice worldbuilding. Which is more important in an MMO.

[Nerovar]

I'd take Classic's more down-to-earth quests and world building over big expansion narratives any time. Apart from that? Wrath was pretty ok because it didn't shit on established lore too much and the tone of the expansion was pretty good.

[Feanoro]

If you paid attention the quest lines and zones and how it all culminated towards Icecrown citadel you would get a lot of your curiosity answered. Compared to the rest of the expansion WOTLK did tell the story far better than other expansions.

Ah yes, "you criticized it, so you must not have paid attention".

I'm not curious or asking questions in that post. I'm stating my impressions and the overall one is that Wrath's story was a mess, frequently contradicting itself and tripping over its own feet. It was certainly better than all the crap that came after it, but that doesn't make it good.

@Super Dickmann Thank you, hope you enjoyed that as much as I enjoyed writing it.

[Lochton]

Wrath and Mists.

[kyo wolfsfang]

I say Wrath because the zones were non linear. You could do any hub of the zones in any order. No mega story line that you were forced to follow in a linear fashion. And the story was not thrown into your face. You learned interesting story lines more naturally. And Arthas was always relevant and int he zones themselves.

You could be out, doing what seems to be a normal quest. Then it completely flips you on your head and poof! here comes Arthas! you were like "OH SHIT" Hell look at the drakuru quest chains. That dude it starts off as a normal quest chain to lead you to the zone dungeon. then BOOM plot twist you were helping the villain all along and arthas himself shows up. All to be finished in a finale in the next zone. Or when you are killing vrykrul and learn of the plan to rez the king. you go to stop it and BOOM arthas shows up and you need to take the fight to Utgard pinnacle when you become stronger.

These days the story is force fed down your throat and make you WAY to important.. I liked it better when i was an adventurer or even just a simple champion of the horde. And the story was not forced fed to you, you came apon it naturally in the world in a non linear story.

Another example. When you start in the fjord, you find a gorge filled with dwarves who went mad. then in the grizzly hills you learn of the taint that vordrassil has and it lead the furbolgs to being mad. As you progress more north you finally learn about ulduar and yog saron.

[Michael Jackson]

Pre-BC: best WARCRAFT story. It had all the elements of the RTSes, more fleshed out.

Legion: best WoW LORE story. Every single class was drowned in amazing lore linked to the artifact quests + the zones themselves.

WOTLK: Good all around, except for horrible ending and handling of the Nerubians.

BC + Cata: Hit and miss. Some interesting new things, many things handled like shit.

BFA: Started great, ended like shit. Azshara and Old Gods were a disaster.

Warlods: Started great, also ended like shit. All they had to do was remake Warcraft 2 in WoW, and they failed horribly.

Pandaria: Despearate forcing of lore trying to be relevant with rest of WoW. China history and folklore shameless copy paste. Hypocritical characters. Not a single memorable thing. How people can rank this anywhere in the top 3 or 4 is mindblowing.

[Shadowferal]

Wrath for me.
But I admit that one of the things that stood way out for me in MoP were the Mantids and their storyline. As "friendly" as they were, they let you know by the end of the main quest chain that they weren't friends at all. The way "Ki'ruk" phrases it...it was simply amazing writing.

[Vargrik]

WotLK.

Legion was a great expansion, but its lore is tainted by the biggest mistake in WoW's history, in my opinion: WoD.

[MikeBogina]

Wrath hit us with a lot of Old God lore, Keeper/Titan lore, Dragon lore and a whole bunch of new races, untop of all the Scourge lore.

Mists of Pandaria hit us with a lot of new chinese themed lore, more Old God and Titan lore, some Zandalari lore and had a lot of Alliance and Horde development lore.

Legion had a huge amount of Night Elf, Legion, Tauren, Vrykul and Keeper lore and all the orderhalls and artifact lore. Oh and made huge Titan lore development and was lowkey setting up some nice Old God lore.

Maybe i'm just listing these because they're my favorite expansions, but i also feel they had really great stories and lore development.

[Feanoro]

Mists of Pandaria hit us with a lot of

Blatant copy paste Chinese history and mythology, slave morality, social Darwinism, hypocritical arrogant asshat characters, and every Hollywood stereotype of Asian countries imaginable.

[Super Dickmann]

Blatant copy paste Chinese history and mythology, slave morality, social Darwinism, hypocritical arrogant asshat characters, and every Hollywood stereotype of Asian countries imaginable.

While I'd not surprised you in saying that the Mists main plot and morality should spoon a gun barrel in all regards except two - their general execution, which was very competent and their acknowledgment that this is a two-faction game so peace is fundamentally undesirable, as far as new lands go, Mists is fairly properly developed. The mogu, mantid and so forth all have character enough to carry their own stories, though I still stick to the arakkoa and ogre short stories in Warlords as depicting antagonistic factions in an interesting way. Sure, there's a lot of Hollywood Chinese crap in there, but the race they want me to care the most about is not even Medieval-fair tier Europe so I can cut a lot of slack.

Also, going back to that previous post, the Argent Tournament is one of the worst plot points not just in Wrath but WoW in general in terms of sheer illogic.

[Bildur]

Voted MoP.

Unlike most expansions (and games) we weren't fighting a big, bad, baddie (except Garrosh). Rather the baddie was us, bringing our hate and violence to an otherwise peaceful land. To me MoP was the most "mature" expansion in the history of WoW

[Not A Cat]

Vanilla and MoP

I like being an adventurer that goes around solving problems. I don't particularly care for being a champion bearing the weight of the world on my shoulders. In vanilla we were adventurers roaming the land and in MoP we were soldiers on the shores, but as we moved in we became adventurers again.

I did also like WotLK. I liked the little side stories with the blue dragonflight and ulduar. I also really liked how intimidating the Lich King was, he was a great villain. Where they lost me was right at the end with Tirion's deus ex machina and the whole, "there must always be a Lich King!!" crap.

[OokOok]

WoW has never been known for it's stories in game.

WOTLK is the highest voted expansion and it literally didn't have a story until ICC with the bolvar questline in icecrown. Other then that the only actual story was the malygos questline and even that was tossed together you could tell.

The only expansion that actually has a story from start to finish is WOD. I know, everyone hates WOD but it kept an actual story the entire way through. WOTLK was about Arthas, yet we stopped to go find an old god for 8 months that had nothing to do with arthas besides that creepy kid under the citadel. We stopped to have a tourny after that... Hey Arthas is trying to take over the world with undead abominations but lets stop for a couple months and joust right in his backyard. GOOD STORY

[Saltysquidoon]

I think that Wrath story was really let down by the tech at the time (I know that seems like a cop out, but nothing could have saved the clusterfuck that was TBC's story).

[Powerogue]

Vanilla - Okay but unfocused. A very big world but extremely shallow and what made WoW the trope namer for "10 bear asses" style questing. Bland, unforgettable, and my character's rotation was terrible. The charm was in higher class based RP features and quests, the sheer variety of zones, and the novelty of it all being new.

The Burning Crusade - One of the worst. Even as I had only just watched a few WC3 vids on youtube by this point to get a feel for the prior story (which seemed way more engaging than the in-game portrayals as loot pinatas) this epitomized everything wrong with WoW storytelling as they were doing it. Karazhan was great, but it wasn't really a significant part of the expansion's core narrative, a sidequest more than anything. It's also, even in one of my favorite moments (blood elf redemption w/Velen), guilty of something I always criticize harshly: making outside material necessary to comprehend WTF is going on: who is this glowing lady above the Sunwell?!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rlPMan2HGQ (sunwell plateau finale)

Wrath of the Lich King - One of the better, we had a clear central focus on the LK...maybe a little too focused. Very "I'll get you next time, Gadget!" as he appeared so frequently (as a clear attempted contrast to Illidan who barely showed up once) it kind of devalued it. We got some narrative focused events like Battle for Undercity and even some cutscenes, ooooh! But it made it very clear that WoW needed to update their models. They constantly focused on hiding the faces in particular. Great for its time, could've benefited from many of the innovations that came later like world questing and better models.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEylX2LJ8c4&t=80s (Ulduar trailer. Jaina's face!)

Cataclysm - World revamp was great overall, I can think of almost no zones that were net worse than before, and it remains my favorite leveling bracket. But this expansion gets some serious points off for creating Green Jesus and having Deathwing explode into a pile of glitter. Seriously, what?!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1bP-m_BwX0&t=643s (You dang-blasted rock elementals, I'll punch you too!)

Mist of Pandaria - Kind of overrated. I only liked about half of the leveling zones. I liked the faction conflict plotline, but the pandaren and other unique stuff was underwhelming to me. The Sha in particular were a huge disappointment compared to how incredible they were portrayed in other media like the Burdens of Shaohao series (one of their best) and the many incredible short stories they wrote for the expansion. Ethereal beasts of emotional torment...but in game it's just "stab it 'til it dies."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xk6swO2qtWU (Burdens of Shaohao full cut)

Warlords of Draenor - Honestly was a really big fan of the leveling experience. They were really honing the way the story is presented to the player through questing here. Best expansion trailer. Great Lords of War series building up these characters....and they all fall flat, and then flat on their face as we kill the generic baddies. Frickin' hell. So much focus on making them distinct characters and yet it's practically just "GRR, ME SMASH, YOU DIE." Khadgar and Gul'dan were standouts, so I'm glad they carried over to Legion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LG3R...JlWRBw&index=1 (Lords of war: Kargath. Contrast to boss fight appearance.)

Legion - The best expansion ever. (Mostly....) unique order hall campaigns for everyone, unique profession campaigns for everyone, it was goddamn awesome. The WOD character model updates were put to incredible use in powerful, emotional scenes unlike anything ever seen before. For the sake of scraping for a nitpick, it was a bit eyeroll worthy that Illidan seemed to talk exclusively in badass quips.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysRqfZPvijE (Sassy Illidan best Illidan)

Battle for Azeroth - honestly second only to Legion overall. All my biggest gripes with it were mechanical. When MOP came out I specifically said "I really like this faction conflict, but the pandas aren't really doing it for me." Oh the irony when at this point my pandaren is my main and it's the first expansion to get me RPing as an actual part in the story since MOP. (Purge of Dalaran as alliance and the quest where you talk to Chen and he peers into your mind.) They went ballsy with this one, deliberately making controversial choices like burning Teldrassil to drum up genuine feelings of fury, confusion, fear, and channeled that towards RPing and relating to the characters we were presented with. (Old Soldier)

I recognize that it falls flat if you hate Saurfang and Baine, and channel those feelings towards despising Blizzard instead of in the intended direction, but it didn't do that for me. Even in the face of very real bad writing, like me handing the dagger to Sylvanas on a Horde pandaren, as a whole, this was the most invested I had ever been in wanting to know how the expansion ends. On that note at least, topping Legion.



I look forward to Shadowlands. May it be a story steeped in characters we've gotten to know and have a vested interest in, like BFA or Legion, rather than a story so diverged from Azeroth it might as well not be canon, like WOD.

[Kallor]

I think you sum them all up nicely threadstarter. Storywise, not a single one really stands out for me. They all pale hard against WC3. However, individual zones and storylines have been done really well at times. I liked Cata's new Undead starting experience for example, with the battle against the Worgen. In general I think they're better at low key storylines confined within zones, and they really suck at the big stuff, the "main story" if you will.