I want to get involved with the Wow Lore

[Deleted]

Hello,

I have been in and out of the game since the burning crusade, and i have never really ever got involved in the lore, for me its always been about killing nubs and slaying dragons.

But when i read these posts that's even remotely related to the lore i just stop reading as i don't understand it.

Is there anyway i can rediscover everything right from the begging? like step by step slowly graduating to whats relevant now?

[Shadowygoodness]

Play the original RTS games?

[Deleted]

Are there any books ect? I want understand the lore from start to finish , and i can only see playing the games as a hindrance!

[Aleksej89]

Play warcraft 3 and TFT expansion - playing warcraft 1 and warcraft 2 will give you additional lore and story.

If you want, read all the warcraft novels/books (you can do it for free over internet, just google it) - most of WoW lore is not represented in the game, but it is well represented in the books.

Also read the blizzard short stories and other warcraft history articles they have on their official site (of wow and warcraft, i guess).

Read websites like wowpedia on any and every topic you find interesting.

[SodiumChloride]

IMHO don't bother, it isn't particularly well written. The story is most driven by the needs of gameplay rather than being written to be entertaining in and of itself. The inconsistencies and piss poor characterization will cause you grief to no end. Preserve your innocence. Ignorance is bliss.

[Elo]

Reading all the in game books gives you a brief overview of the lore as a whole (up until vanilla wow).
You can find them here: http://wowpedia.org/History_of_Warcraft

[Trassk]

This often gets asked by people taking an interest in the story, but its not quick to learn.

Thing is, much happens in different mediums too, ingame form, but also in novels, and comics, all related and all cannon lore (don't let some of the negative kids here tell you its not).

A very good place to read though is wowinsider, which has its own lore section. http://wow.joystiq.com/category/know-your-lore/

Also, use wowpedia as reference to things, as it cross references a lot of elements if theres something or someone you don't quite understand.

[Deleted]

Just read through wowpedia, read the quest texts when you're leveling.

[Shadowygoodness]

IMHO don't bother, it isn't particularly well written. The story is most driven by the needs of gameplay rather than being written to be entertaining in and of itself. The inconsistencies and piss poor characterization will cause you grief to no end. Preserve your innocence. Ignorance is bliss.

I would say this is only true once you reach what is considered "WoW lore" - that is lore that was created for the World of Warcraft. The lore from the games preceding the mmo is quite good and much less inconsistent. Once you get to WoW game-based lore and books created in the wake of WoW's popularity, things start getting retconned all over the place, and everything just implodes in on itself. Annnnnnnd this is what happens when gameplay is put before story, sadly.

[Deleted]

Okay, thanks for the responses.

The only thing that has stopped me ever looking into it in the first place is the shear amount of lore spanning over a number of years, really quite daunting.

Just wondering if there's any structured lore out there, like a step by step, "this happens, then this happens, then that". So im not randomly reading something online that i don't fully understand, to then read up on something that is much further on in the lore sequence.

[Deleted]

There is multipel books that is really great(not just for wow lore also nicely written just as a fantasy book).

There is wowpedia where you litterlary can read up on every(almost) you can get the major lore part of everything, from the orcs before they came to azeorth undtill MoP. Or everything to ilidan/arthas/gul dan every one that is just slightly importen.
That and play warcraft 3, good game, with some good lore

[Deleted]

If you wanna spend real money on lore books written by blizzard, here is a recommendation order:

War of the Ancients Trilogy
Rise of the Horde
The Last Guardian
Tides of Darkness
Beyond the Dark Portal
Lord of the Clans

[Deleted]

I'm actually quite amazed by the quick and efficient responses.

I have always pondered whether i should ever bother with the lore, but the lovely people on these forums have answered the question for me.

Thanks alot!

(Cant wait to for the moment when the future expansion hits and i actually understand whats going on)

[Lazuli]

There are quite a few books, read quest text, read the books locating in various area's of WoW, play WC1-3.

[Gamevizier]

yes.

at first there were these huge powerful guys that went from planet to planet creating life and doing some very advanced experiments on the planets. these guys were the Titans.

when the Titans came to Azeroth they got into a fight with Azeroth's current dominant power. the old golds, the Titans managed to imprison them deep within Azeroth and then after awhile they departed and made the dragons the guardians of this world. their other creations were the earthen (stone-ish dwarves.) the mechagnomes (robotic gnomes) and the vrykul.

now one of these titans, while fighting demonic beings on another world, gets corrupted by the demons and becomes Sargares. sargares approaches the Eredar leaders Velen, Kiljaeden and Archimonde and offers them to join him, Velen and his followers refuse and escape from the other two brothers who accept sargares' offer and become demons.

now back on azeroth, a group of ancient trolls discover the well of eternity and become blessed by it's powers. they start worshiping the goddess Elune and after some time they evolve into night elves. night elf society regards magisters highly, but after a while their queen Azshara starts to contact demons. she opens a portal and demons pour into this world. in the end the demons are defeated by the combined forces night elves, dragons and other minor creatures. the well of eternity is destroyed and causes the sundering.

the sundering sinks the majority of the land into the sea and in the end only Kalimdor, Eastern Kingdoms, Northrend and Pandaria remain. the maelstorm at the center of the map is actually the place the well of eternity collapsed.

now, back to the old gods. after awhile the old god's unleash the "curse of flesh" which turns the earthen, mechagnomes and the vrykul into flesh beings... it proceeds to even make vrykul children small and weak. the vrykul leader orders these children slain but many vrykul didn't want their children to die. so they send them to another place (eastern kingdoms) these small children become the humans.

the night elves ban magical practices and establish a druidic society. the mages refuse this decision and travel to eastern kingdoms. bringing with themselves a small sample of the well of eternity. they use that to create the sunwell, these elves evolve into high elves.

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after running away from his brothers, Velen finally settles his people at Draenor. which is today's outlands. they live there happily with the natives of that planet, the orcs. but Sargares finds them at last. they corrupt the orcs and use them to kill the majority of the Draenei people and then contact Medivh, the most powerful mage on azeroth and use him to open a portal to Azeroth. orcs pour forth from the portal and start killing the humans.

in the end stormwind, the capital of the nation of stormwind falls. orcs continue to march north and start a war with dwarves,humans and high elves. in the end the orcs are defeated.

decades later, the lich king (a powerful orc shaman that demons turned into the leader of undead, read more about it.) contacts kel'thuzad, a wizard at Lordaeron (the northern human kingdom) and summons him to northrend. after a few years kel'thuzad returns to Lordaeron and creates a cult of necromancers called the cult of the damned who serve the undead scourge (the name of lich king's faction). they use the cult to spread a plague that turns the living into the undead.

Arthas, son of king terenas (lordaeron's king) kills kel'thuzad and hunts down Mal'ganis, a demonic agent of the scourge. when he is in northrend he is drawn to the calls of a strange sword, Frostmourne, said to be powerful enough to let them kill the undead. he kills Mal'ganis but the blade turns out to be cursed by the lich king himself (arthas is actually tricked into wielding it.)

the now possessed arthas returns to lordaeron and kills his father, and turns both his kingdom and the elven kingdom into ashes. why? because the lich king was tasked by the demons to destroy any resistance and pave the way for another invasion. Kel'thuzad is reanimated by Arthas to open a portal for demons.

Lordaeron falls to the undead forces and demonic forces procceed to attack kalimdor, home of night elves.

now, prior to the attack. Jaina proudmoore, daughter of Daelin Proudmoore (nation of kultiras) had received a warning from an unknown prophet to lead her people west into kalimdor. the same prophet told Thrall, warchief of orcs, to do the same.

humans, orcs and night elves along with other minor races gather their forces to defend against archimonde (velen's brother and leader of the current invasion) they manage to save Azeroth and defeat the demonic invasion again.

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thats a very very very basic lore of what happens untill W3:frozen throne.

[Deleted]

Super interesting, already started reading on WoWpedia.

I cant really believe i have played this game for a number of years, and never even bothered with it, like... you notice it alot when your grinding levels or competing in raid instances with those dramatic cut off scenes est.

Just a shame that i wasn't old enough when the content was relevant to respect it enough to take time to understand and learn what was going on.

Its like an unexplored world at the edge of my fingertips that i have never quite been able to reach until now.

Ty for reply, didn't think id really get any.

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I am like a kid in a sweet shop, 5000 tabs open trying to soak everything in. its really detailed in its explanation which just gets me lost clicking every single link that im like (previous thought quotes) "wtf is the ashbringer", "omg did arthas really kill his dad", "What is the pantheon and who are the old gods", "are the dwarfs really that dumb that they divided into 3 clans and accidently resummoned ragnaros upon azeroth again" ect

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Although Warcraft is an amazing fictional universe, you may find that Blizzard has difficultly depicting their stories. Character development has issues in some areas, and there are plot holes as well. The book writing won't be as good as say...Dragonlance, but it most certainly is well above average writing.

Personally, I find the ingame quests more immersive than the books. Just play through any ingame zone storyline or epic arc and read a WoW novel and you will know what I mean.

[MoanaLisa]

Is there anyway i can rediscover everything right from the begging? like step by step slowly graduating to whats relevant now?

Hello Yemi,

Apart from the advice you've received already [ignoring those that stupidly tell you not to bother] take a look at the blue post linked below. It was a question on the Blizzard forums much like yours and should give you a start with timelines and such. WoWpedia is a great lore resource once you know what you're looking for as are the commercial paperbacks.

http://blue.mmo-champion.com/topic/2...ine-available/

Enjoy. I think you'll find the resources at Blizzard helpful for getting started (it's relatively high-level stuff) if not for getting into the deep detail which can be done elsewhere.

[Deleted]

Lot's of helpful posts.

There's also a few people on youtube that compile lore from various sources, sum it up and record themselves talking about it. Here's one - http://www.youtube.com/user/Nobbel87

Then there's the official site - http://us.battle.net/wow/en/game/the...craft/chapter1

Good luck.

[Deleted]

Okay thanks.

Its so detailed its going to take me a long time to get through it but that was my intention.

Trying to get a brief understanding of the key moments and then slowly disperse into all the detailed groups and clans and such.

I don't quite understand why things have happened they way they have (for example) why did the wisps and malf stormrage have the power to destroy archi, why was it that he couldn't just soak up the well/tree and become some godlike creature? I guess blizzard just decided that was the right progression for things to happen...... but still does make you wonder what if

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So i have a few questions id like to ask and love to get peoples opinions on.

Wowpedia states that the pantheon enslaved the 5 old gods below Azeroth, "The Pantheon shattered the Old Gods' citadels and chained the five evil gods far beneath the surface of the world" but they only mention 4 : C'Thun, Yogg-Saron, Y'Shaarj, N'Zoth . Who was the 5th?

Why is it that we've seen so much of certain old gods (for example Yogg Saron) and nearly nothing of others? (N'Zoth). is N'Zoth being saved for a possible emerald dream expansion later down the line?..

Was Y'shaarj the only reason for the mists of pandaria expansion? or was it tied in after or something? (would love someone to explain pandarian lore allitle bit more).

We have already fought against Al'Akir the Windlord and Ragnaros the Firelord. Is Neptulon the Tidehunter also being saved for a later date? And why have we seen all but little of Therazane the Stonemother? All i can recall about that she sold me a shoulder enchant in deepholm (pardon my ignorance)

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Has the cataclysm ruined all the previous lore, say if i was to level a new character to try and get a better understanding of lets say dwarf lore and how they came too (crafted from stone by a titan to protect azeroth?) would it be like wrong/different?

It is quite cool that after playing the game for so long and never bothering with the lore due to my blissful ignorance, now that i have actually taken time to learn it, i piece puzzles together from my experiences with the game.

For example, i always wondered why dwarfs were given the stoneform passive that turned them into rockforms for a duration, now i understand that from reading the lore that they were crafted from stone, IT ALL MAKES SENSE!