There inst a ton of lore book wise except about what the twilight dragon flight is and why its bad.

Basicly it boils down to some stuff with Deathwing. So I kinda expect a continuation of this story in Cataclysm, actually i think blizz might have said something like that at some point.

http://www.wowwiki.com/Twilight_dragonflight for the short of it. Dont click the link if you plan on reading the book.

Agreed. There's definitely some real disconnects between the game and the story, where a player seems to be required to read the comics/books/follow Metzen's Twitter in order to find out what's going on.

Naxxramas is the one that grind my gears. I may be wrong, but there seems to be very little in game to actually tell you there's a raid inside that pyramid flying above Wintergarde, other than a few NPCs chatting vaguely. I think if some quests were added, which are completed as areas are completed/bosses are downed (the way Karazhan did), it'd draw players into the story a bit more. The fact that players are just supposed to "know" something is there is just lazy design

@macster

The whole quest hub in wintergarde keep starting with http://www.wowhead.com/?quest=12235 is all about the fortress being under attack from Naxxramas.

The subplot with Thel'zan's phylactery explained how Thel'zan (formerly Father Inigo Montoy) had betrayed the alliance by returning Kel'Thuzad's phylactery to the Lich King and enabling Naxxramas to be restored.

The commanders on the battlefield around Naxxramas not only 'chatting vaguely' about Naxxramas but they have holographic visual aids and give elaborate presentations discussing the bosses in great detail.

If you were blindsided by Naxxramas, you must simply be blind.

I'm aware of the quest chain - now tell me how this level 72 chain is supposed to get players into a level 80 raid, given the two events will be separated by weeks? It's not good storytelling.

"There's definitely some real disconnects between the game and the story, where a player seems to be required to read the comics/books/follow Metzen's Twitter in order to find out what's going on."

Yeah, it's sort of funny because I never really thought much about "seeing all the content" until it was brought up with Wrath. But it's true that I really have no idea about how BC was resolved. Demons are all over so obviously that's pretty bad, and there's blood elves doing something bad. Then there's the shattered sun offensive taking this island with both blood elves and demons (double bad?), and a bunch of talk about Muru. I simply do not have the time to be that hardcore, so really most of what I actually know about BC came from reading wowwiki. Which is sort of sad that I play a game but have to read a webpage to actually know what happens. And before the UR BAD posts, I'm an alright player; but actually seeing the whole story really shouldn't be left to the 1% elite people. They need content too, but at least let the rest of us see the freaking STORY.

@macster

I see what you mean. You do sort of wander off away from Naxx at like lev 74 with no lingering threads such as a red quest saying to come back later and kill KT. Usually you do all the quests in an area and afterward you typically have a few dungeon/raid quests, some of which might still be red so you need to level up a bit and come back later to finish them. It is odd that they didn't do anything like that for Naxx. They told the story very well in my opinion they just didn't include any quests to bring you back at 80 which was a bit of an oversight.

As they got away from attunement quests this expansion, most of the lore for instances now exists in leveling quests. I don't think that's a bad thing, if you care about the reasons we're visiting whatever instance, you can read the quest text either while leveling, or check it out on wowhead, or pay attention when you level an alt. I think this is a pretty good system, actually. If you care to read the quests, they're there, but not mandatory. You're going to have a large number of quests in the leveling zones anyway. They might as well do double duty and provide the backstory for dungeons and raids. There's really not a reason there needs to be a long quest chain at level cap to explain why we're going to whatever instance.

I'm not sure how you could have been active during the end of TBC and not understood what was going on at Quel'Danas. In addition to all the the quests (which were released in stages, so it's not like you had a big lore bomb to wade through all at once), NPCs in Shattrath wouldn't shut up about it in /say and Magister's Terrace actually includes a quest that has you click on an orb to look at the Sunwell and what's happening there.

And that leaves aside the cool trailer Blizzard put up on their Web site and the big write-up there.

Short of Chris Metzen coming over to your house, I'm not sure what more they could have reasonably done to communicate the storyline. And once you understand QD, you pretty much understand TBC as it worked out (rather than how it was originally planned): Kael'Thas wanted to save his people by switching them from the Sunwell to fel energies, but in the process, damned himself, almost damned his people (starting with the paladins, who are the Stormtroopers to his Hitler -- ooh, Godwin!) and ultimately attempted to surrender Azeroth to his new master, Sargeras.

Basically, any time elves start messing around with wellsprings of magical power, there's going to be demonic trouble.

Sargeras' defeat includes relighting the Sunwell and restoring the blood (and presumably high) elves to its energies. So the raiders who beat Sargeras ultimately save the entire high elf race. TBC thus is about the fall and rise of Quel'Thalas. In retrospect, the expansion was probably best-experienced by an elf-dominated Horde guild.