I’m worried blizzard is starting to slip on the sense of continuity in its game. My understanding was that the content in Wrath takes place after the content in Vanilla and TBC and before the content in Cat. Traditionally, as you leveled, you moved through the story. Things started to get muddled with the introduction of death knights that had to level through outlands. It was insinuated that the starting zone took place sometime after vanilla and possibly after TBC, but you’re still sent to level in Outlands and fight Illidan without any explanation whatsoever. It was an 8-10 level break in the continuity that many players were willing to plow through, but it still marked a point where the normal flow of the story no longer made sense.

Thing’s look like they could become even worse in Cat, given how technically the lower level content will take place before the events in TBC and wrath. We’re going to have twenty levels in the middle of the story that exist in a time period outside of the normal flow of events. That’s incredibly messy, and while ignorable by veterans will only confuse new players.

So, how is blizzard going to fix this? I’m worried they’ll take the approach where references to outside events will simply be stripped out of TBC and Wrath and players will be expected to rush through these zones on their way to 85. I’m really happy to see the vanilla content get an update, but they need to overhaul the connection between all their different expansions or else they risk a storytelling experience with huge continuity issues.