Ralkern: "You REALLY need to play wow...

Wait no not THAT ONE!"

jokujunahi: This is like someone watching Game of Thrones season 1 and 2 and then skipping straight to season 7 and 8.

CustardCream33: This guy's an idiot, reading the quest dialogues and declining them lmao

vicarious_gaming: Just play classic if you want a continuation of the story - the story has progressed 20 years since wc 3

Sixsten: This video is kind of heartbreaking mainly due to how just completely inaccessible that 'follow-up' story you're craving is. Though this video is funnily timed as WoW /just/ redid the entire new player experience to focus on telling a cohesive narrative from start to level-cap (and catches you up to the current story). It also does things like adding 'follower' dungeons and raids which basically means you can do them solo as they come up in the narrative.

There is also 'lorewalking' at max level which are little short stories that give you the follow-ups you're craving, like Arthas' story.

Mainly, this video kinda woke me up to some of WoW's problems as a long-time player,, as you outlined, how much of the game just begs you to not care about it. Talents? Auto-filled. Rotation? One-button. Open-world? Fly-over it.

These are all things players have debated over for literal decades at this point, but I had never considered the angle of a new player looking to genuinely engage with the world. As you also said, veterans typically just say (including myself) 'get to endgame, that's the REAL game', but a new player is there to get lost in the /world/. I think years of player feedback have led to WoW to way to heavily internalize that 'endgame only' mantra, and it has suffered greatly for it.

If you'd like to chat more about WoW outside of a comment section, feel free to reach out. Like any other long-lived franchise, the comment section can get a bit heated lol

JuanSolos: mad respect for swapping to tank and then full sending with no healer

FuryOfCalderon: This is not Elwynn Forest.

Prilliyo: You poor soul

starr4769: why did he play retail and not classic as his first WoW experience.. i am in shambles

Lyn685: "Everyone kind of looks like some sort of Disney character."

So true.

skyller6853: Did NO ONE tell him to play classic instead of retail bruh

Zaicil: Other people have already mentioned it but you basically jumped from Warcraft 3 to Warcraft 12 which is why there’s things like new characters and Jaina having grey hair

LuckyGnom: Wait, but this is not how someone who just finished Warcraft 3 experienced WoW. You were supposed to play base WoW on a private server or Classic WoW from Blizzard.

Sychotix-fc8bw: experiencing both the franchises highs and the lows for the first time in the same year is wiled

CptRonSolo: You poor man, like 4 days ago they updated the new player experience which adds jaina to the alliance tutorial and thrall to the horde, you wouldve loved that

laverathanf2073: Definitely give Classic a shot. It has more of that open world sandbox feel like OSRS at the cost of having none of the talking head text boxes.

For the current version of WoW, I encourage you to finish it. Jaina does come back into the story and there's a familiar face in the last Alliance zone you've yet to meet, though I think you might only see him on the Horde side while leveling. I also encourage you to look up "Daughter of the Sea." It's probably one of the hypest trailers Blizzard has ever made for the game.

Otherwise, most of your WC3 kicks are gonna come from the Classic, Burning Crusade, and Wrath of the Lich King expansions, which you can experience either through Classic WoW itself or in the current version using the Chromie Time stuff you learned about earlier.

safd930: do classic wow! version that came out after the warcraft 3 ended, different team of people are leading and designing the modern wow

KarazolaYT: Exile's Reach was honestly the single worst decision that Blizzard made. They try to load you with way too much information about the lore, game mechanics, etc. The original starting zones were all about atmosphere. They knew that the most important thing they had to do, was get players invested in the world. They did that by making sure players knew what it meant to live life as whatever race they picked. You understood what it was like to be a Dwarf, or a Tauren, or a Night Elf, or an Orc, or a Human. And in the zones after that, the game slowly opens up and crosses into the other races, and they get to understand how the race they selected fits into their faction, and the wider world. When a player is invested, you don't need to focus on teaching them the gameplay mechanics; Invested players will teach that to themselves.

the.e.g.g.s: oh boy my ass sleep schedule payed off

PestoTheMaid: "Every boss was just a vessel, actually"

Welcome to Blizzard storytelling.

CondemnedInformer: You didn't play the continuation of Warcraft 3, you played retail wow. Classic is what you want.

endered2383: Author, here are a few recommendations you should keep in mind while playing WoW:

1. You should have stuck to the tutorial. The game expects you, as a new player, to first get acquainted with the Dragonflight expansion. The entire intro is built around it. And the expansion itself was designed to be best suited for new players.

2. The fact that you switched to BFA means that, most likely, upon reaching a certain experience level, you'll simply be teleported to Chromie, who will send you into the story of the current expansion, if you've purchased it. This could interrupt your current storyline.

3. As a reminder, WoW is a direct sequel to Warcraft 3. If you wanted to play it chronologically, you should have started with WoW Classic. That's the version with content from 2004. What you're playing now (BFA) is the 2017 version.

4. Over the 20 years of WoW's existence, the game's story has evolved and expanded significantly. So don't be surprised if you don't understand something about the story and lore. You've literally missed 20 years of story.

5. The best option is to complete the initially recommended storyline from the tutorial on one character: Exile's Reach - Dragon Isles - War Within. Then level up the remaining heroes through Chromie's time in other expansions.

6. By the way, older expansions are more lackluster in terms of storytelling. They have no cutscenes, cinematics, or dialogue (Burning Crusade is an example). Therefore, my personal recommendation is to start playing through either Mists of Pandaria or Cataclysm with your second hero. Of course, you can also start with Wrath of the Lich King. But there are almost no cinematics, cutscenes, or dialogue there either. All of that started appearing in Pandaria-Cataclysm. So I'm not sure how interesting it would be for a new player.

That's all for now. Have a great game! =)

kachet-kl7me: Play Wrath of the Lich King for full resolve of the Warcraft 3 story

Tephr1te: The problem with getting into wow is that as you level in expansions like BFA, all of the leveling is setting up the expansion storys (jaina, azerite, the horde vs alliance war, and more), while also having shorter story arcs (like the waycrest story in drustvar). The expansion stories are then paid off once you get to max level, and especially in the slightly older expansions like BFA, are gated behind the kinds of end-game gameplay time-gates/loops/progression that is only reasonable if you were playing it when it was the current expansion. Trying to replay the older expansions for leveling leaves you having completed a handful of the smaller stories, but then being ferried off to the current expansion with a bunch of hanging threads. They have attempted many things to try and fix this problem (chromie time being one of them - in the past the world didn't scale with your level so you would get to 60 with classic zones, then you would get to play maybe 2 zones of the next expansion if you were lucky before being booted off to the next expansion every 10 levels).

cyancard: Play classic next for sure if nothing else icecrown citadel in wotlk could probably be your favorite content

Dec 11 2025

Buy WOW Classic Gold (lvl60)