Which WoW Expansion Had The Worst Lore?

Hello guys this is Doronsmovies and today I will be talking about which expansion had the worst lore so far. Generally I'd avoid negativity but with so many storylines, ones which were great there have also been plenty that completely crashed and burned.

So without further ado, let's get into the lore. Warcraft lore has evolved quite a lot, at this point the franchise is almost 30 years old which is quite a lot for a video game. Personally I started playing during warcraft 3 primarily, although I did play warcraft 2 and it was really the Lordaeron and the orcish storyline that captivated and me and got me into the series.

In 2004 Warcraft transitioned heavily into the MMORPG genre and that was a massive shift for the series. In my opinion, it was a milion different circuimstances that really favoured Blizzard that grew and expanded Warcraft so much. First the MMORPG genre was relatively new and unexplored and gaming was really different back in 2004, there weren't that many very immersive games, sure there were excellent games at the time but just the technology didn't really evolve to support it.

So world of warcraft was a massive hit because you suddenly had this virtual world with milions of people with a great storyline and that is really what drew most people in. This fact heavily impacted the lore, warcraft originally started with a very limited perspective as an RTS game so now that there was this massive world, Blizzard always had to patch things up, make up new sides to the story and constantly play catch up.

Initially this was great, we got books like Lord of the Clans, Day of the Dragon, War of the Ancients, of Blood and Honor and these usually just expanded upon the old storylines and gave more depth. However, over time things started getting complex. We got more characters, more continents, more storylines and most importantly new villains.

In my opinion, the villains part is where Blizzard really started messing up and honestly I believe that started slowly after wrath of the lich king. Arthas was a regular character from warcraft 3 that was a natural threat and just a continuation of the story.

Blizzard didn't have to make up something crazy about him, how in fact he is working for a different dimension and he an entirely different entity. No they just gave his storyline a bit more depth and grew it organically. After that we had Deathwing where they did start messing with the lore a bit but he was an old character so in my opinion in did fit in.

Mists of Pandaria was an expansion with mostly new lore that I think was in most cases done right. I think the actual problems started arising when we ran out of the original characters and now Blizzard had to really start working overtime. After Mop we still had 2 major enemies, the Burning Legion and the Old Gods, but since the game was an mmorpg with a living world if we just defeated these two what was their left to do, and I believe here lies the problem.

Warlords of Draenor was in my opinion a step in the wrong direction. Blizzard wanted to bring in the original warcraft feel with the orcs and the humans, but as they couldn't really do it in any other way they decided to include alternate universes and time travel which was incredibly confusing and still is to this day.

Honestly I believe it was the worst expansion so far as that is when Blizzard really started slacking. It really felt like they abandoned this idea half-way through and they decided to just transition it into Legion. There were so many characters and storylines that were completely rushed or that went nowhere and today aside from a little mention of the alternate Draenor in Battle for Azeroth that entire world is irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.

The biggest change to the lore consistency, in my opinion, was the release of Warcraft Chronicle in 2016. That is when things got interesting the entire storyline drastically changed and like half of the original story was retconned or slightly altered.

In my opinion this was cool as I felt like it gave it a lot more depth and that there were bigger evils out there aside from the Old Gods and the Legion and this did give Blizzard a lot more room to work with, but I think they completely wasted this potential at least thus far.

Legion, in my opinion, was decent overall but I hated two things about it. First the alternate universe Gul'Dan and the Legion that transcends timelines and honestly the ending. Us defeating the Legion in one patch, going to the main base and imprisoning Sargeras really disappointed me.

Kil'Jaeden and all these demons lords defeated by us players that are suddenly godlike and the entire Argus, the stronghold off this insanely powerful force essentially demolished in one patch. Now battle for Azeroth had a ton of potential and lore wise I believe Blizzard did a lot of things right, the Kul'Tiras and the Zandalari storyline was cool, gave us more depth and we revisited old lore but ultimately the ending of the expansion is what ruined it for me.

N'Zoth and his defeat was terrible honestly and the entire storyline around Azerite and us being the children of Azeroth was really cheesy. Now I'm not a huge fan of the Sylvanas storyline but the Shadowlands seems promising. So looking back at it in my opinion the lore started really getting slightly problematic post wrath of the lich king, but it got really problematic after Mists of Pandaria.

Honestly every expansion since then had more or less really big issues either with consistency, retcons or just bad writing. However one expansion that overall had a bad storyline in my opinion was Warlords of Draenor. that made up for it, but there wasn't much to redeem Warlords of Draenor.

From the start it was confusing and while the Iron Horde storyline seemed promising and exciting, these guys were just beaten like it was nothing, suddenly Legion showed up, they were fighting with us, we freed them and it was happily ever after. There were all these characters and these hidden mysteries that were completely abandoned and until recently with the maghar and the new draenei no one really cared about Draenor.

So overall I want to say that I was heavily disappointed with the lore in the past 4-5 years but overall I'm still optimistic and there are still redeeming qualities and I really hope Blizzard steps up their writing game in Shadowlands and really brings in an excellent storyline that would be much more similar to that original warcraft feel.