Final Fantasy 14 Fan Reacts to The (almost) Complete History of World of Warcraft 

I think some are under the impression I disliked the video, which is just wildly untrue. I found it very impressive that he was able to put so much detail within a short time frame. The issue I have is the the concept of that itself, not his execution of it. I personally think, if the summary was longer he could have included even more details without having to rush to cram it all within 23 minutes. I personally struggle to retain info if its given to me extremely fast, that's not a problem with the video. I reacted to this in a way that would ensure I'd retain as much as I could. Pausing, rewinding, stopping when necessary. If people don't like that? That's okay.

Nobbel87 is a serious Warcraft lore enthusiast (he expanded out to FFXIV during the great migration at the end of Shadowbringers) and his narrations are pretty entertaining so he's definitely worth checking out.

Your missing something KEY as to why Arthas killed the people of Stratholm Before they turned into zombies. Before Arthas made it to stratholme, He and a massive army he had, fought a small group of zombies and they barely won the fight. So Arthas having fought the zombies before, knew if the city became zombies the entirety of Azeroth would fall. As it would be too many zombies to fight off. This is the primary reason the Culling of Stratholme happened while they were still humans... but its lots of these decisions that add up to completely break Arthas and make him evil.

There is extra animated cutscenes that explain some character motivations even more: Harbingers: Illidan, Khadgar, Gul’Dan Warbringers: Sylvanas, Jaina, Azhara and Lords of War tell the story of a few major orc clanheads and the orc vs draenei battle on Draenor. Bonus: The lessons of Shaoshao (famous pandaren emperor). They are all very good!

Nobel87 is THE lore guy. Every expansion he is on top of all lore in game and has several videos of the lore because the game has a TON per expansion

PlatinumWow makes great lore vids, they're well explained and pretty funny too

Nobel87 is the guy you want for the lore, specially if youre totally new to WoW. He is a great narrator/storyteller too

I love how you pause to take time to absorb the information, neat detail and I love the lines you put together

For context about Bolvar being a "good" Lich King - a special ability of the Red Dragon's fire is that creates life. So when Alexstraza and the Red Dragons burned away the plague at the Wrathgate, it not only burned away the plague within Bolvar, but it also kept him alive. Albeit he was very, very crispy.

If you want a slower one where the person doesn't talk too fast then I suggest you watch this video: The Story of Warcraft - Full Version 2.0 [Lore]. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-RKsNKZi5Ct8.html It is made by Nobbel87 who is a legendary lore channel in the warcraft community. His voice is soothing and it is well explained.

Bro, i am so impressed by your diligence to understand the lore of the game youre wanting to dive into. I've played WoW for over 15 years and I am so hyped to see your journey into its storytelling. In the recent years it has gotten a bit muddled, but its such a rich and diverse world full of unique and pronounced characters. I hope you have a blast discovering the story and the character arcs, and cant wait to watch. Much love to you

Man. You really need to watch Everything you need to know about dragons by Platinum WoW. Dragons are a very important part of this universe (more than you imagine) and the best thing is that video wouldn't be nearly as chaotic and difficult to grasp as this one. You'll enjoy it and actually learn more I promise :)

23:45 Part of the reason arthas killed those people was because they would become a MASSIVE army of undead, stratholm was a city that rivaled their capital in terms of size.

In the video, where they talk about the First War, Second War, Third War those are basically the plots of the first three games in the series. WoW started with an already established lore and story, and that was a major part of the draw that excited us older players about the game.

13:10 That mage woman is called Aegwynn. The mage you saw in the long cinematic video is Jaina Proudmoore. They are not related, and definitely not the same person.

Arthas was right to cull Stratholme. Morally, it was messed up but it was the right call at the time.

great vid, cool to see how much you like the lore, nobbel87 is a really good channel as well if you want more in depth stories / specifics of the events so far.

Dude I love how you INSTANTLY had an opinion on the Culling of Stratholme. Brother you are HOME. YOU PASSED THE CHECK.

Bless you for attempting to understand this story so deep in. Regardless how deep it goes, its a great story. Even though it feels like a fever dream.

Arthas was justified in culling Stratholm, I would recommend to play the game so you can face the enemies Arthas was fighting

Actually Warcraft 1 is just the part from opening of the Dark Portal to fall of Stormwind (The First War). Warcraft 2 is follow up until the fall of Horde under the Blackrock Mountain (The Second War). Warcraft 2 expansion is Alliance expedition to Outlands. Warcraft 3 if part from the Thrall escaping camps until death of Archimond (The Third War) and its exapnsion is followup until Arthas puts the hat on and becomes Lich King. Everything else is in World of Warcraft and/or books.

Bro really said “you have to leave stuff out”. Bro he left ally out lol wow lore is wild and expansive.

I think you're right, man. Honestly I think the videos like this one are best for people who play the game but don't know all of the background lore, so they're able to pick up on more things. What would be better for new people/potential players would be 15-20 minute videos about different lore eras.

It's A LOT to digest. I appreciate your effort, and it's cool to see when things click into place for you. That video is a little hyper lol. It's hard to even process it with the little blurbs he puts here and there. Kudos to you for diving in.

One small correction... Deathwing didnt stay in Ironforge for 10,000 years until after TRotLK, he was one of the "hero" charaters in the 2nd war expanaion from the first part of the 2nd war. Warcraft 2, Beyond the Dark Portal. He was given armor between Warcraft 2 and Warcraft 2 expansion.

I'm loving that you are doinig this. I love when gamers from other narrative driven games give their takes on our game. Actually helps me give better feedback to blizzard by seeing outside opinions. So, thank you brother.

If you want in depth and something relaxing Nobbel87 is where you want to go. He doesn't make videos like this that feel more like bullet points than a story. Nobbel does some of the best work in WoW lore imho. You feel entertained and informed while watching them. Like when you had a nice fun teacher in school.

Really enjoying you learning the story, and also really looking forward to seeing you run around Azeroth; like what character you make and everything like that. There's a lot to see and do out here! I started playing in 09 (during The Burning Crusade) and there are Still classes I haven't tried ^.^ They have it set up now where a new character starts out doing the questing zones for Battle For Azeroth, and its pretty good stuff--then people can do the Dragonflight zones. Have you thought about whether you'll be Alliance or Horde to start?

Platinum wow has some of the best/entertaining lore videos to react to, and the hurricane trailers for each of the patches are interesting to see the environments and super hype

I discovered your channel just a few days ago, and I'm loving this WoW content. I've been playing since 2002 Friends and Family Alpha, and love the game-world so much, that it's reinvigorating to see it all over again through fresh eyes. The lore is incredibly deep, with multiple novels spawning from multiple games. Even I can't possible absorb all of it, but that doesn't stop me from loving it when I hear/see it. I genuinely appreciate your takes on WoW. Having also played FF, I know it'll be a bit of a shock, mechanically. The two games share a bit, obviously, so the comparison vids will be great, and I can't wait. If you find yourself on the Hyjal server, or one of the servers in our Battlegroup (the server cluster), we'll have to run a dungeon or two once you get in the game. Love the content, and keep up the great work! :D

Thank you for watching this video; despite the breathneck pace and some comedic bias reframing, it is a fairly good primer for the lore as it has evolved over the years, stopping just prior to the Shadowlands expansion (which really throws lore for a loop). As WoW does not have one big continuous main quest line, there is no 'starting at the beginning' for a player. Instead, a lot of the stuff before the 14-minute "here's where WoW starts" mark is dealt with in novels, graphic novels, time travels and lore explanations throughout the game. The really old lore is still being slowly unraveled - the old gods being truly dead-dead is one of the things currently being contested, same with the 'Burning Legion is the same in all timelines' paradigm and a LOT of titan lore. Turns out, all we knew of the deep past was told by the titans, and they weren't neutral storytellers. The nice thing about the flexibility of this is that you *can* time travel back to say ten thousand years ago and witness those events unfold in-game. Or at least a pocket dimension version of them. It's also more than a little mind-boggling, and has led to a fair few revisions of the lore over time. At this point, the players have tampered with time so much that the bronze dragon guardians of time have nearly given up maintaining it, and we've also cajoled over to the afterlife and sorted things out there in a truly horrid way - yet apparently without acknowledging just how much that broke every races' established religious beliefs. With this primer, it'll be easier to look up more in-depth lore videos on topics mentioned in this one. Virtually every second in this one could be expanded to a novel of lore in another format (and many of them actually are; I've lost track of how many WoW novels there are by now). I really do hope you'll enjoy the game when you try it out, and will definitely throw a follow over on Twitch for when you do. WoW does have a lot of fairly satisfying storylines, just be aware the bulk of them are 'chaptered' - either contained in one local area/zone, or in segments across each expansion. Side note, did enjoy the VOD of yesterday's livestream; do hope you'll watch the rest of that video too. Will look forward to more WoW reaction vids. :)

23:20 Fun Fact: The guy who developed "The Culling of Stratholme" campaign level in Warcraft 3 runs a youtube channel called DesignerDave. If you're ever interested about how designing Warcraft 3 went back in the day he's the channel you wanna watch.

So just for some additional context, most of this lore is actually in fact delivered in game, it's just that the video is gonna in chronologically by the in-universe timeline, not release timeline. There are bits and pieces in this video where it discusses lore that's delivered to the player like 10+ years apart, lol. Like the first few minutes alone is stuff we only found out in Legion which is -- holy fuck that was 8 years ago already.

Arthas is the Crown Prince of that kingdom, and the Plague spreads FAST and is uncurable ((like 99% how the fk do we cure this guys?!)) and Stratholme is STILL one of the LARGEST dungeons in the game. Its a HUGE town in the lore. If they were left, they would easily spread and then leave and spread it ALL OVER so as the crown prince, he had to make a really hard choice that, logically is correct. ARTHAS DID NOTHING WRONG

first time watching your channel. One thing I really liked is that you genuinely seem interested in the lore rather than just seeking views. Like you try to remember who is who and what is what. I also like that you don’t talk over the video. You’d be surprised how few people meet both criteria.

Bruh, you said you want to play ALL of World of Warcraft??? I mean, i genuinely can't think of a better goal but holy crap do you have your work cut out for you. We are talking years if not DECADES long of a task. To cover all the content you don't just have to play a character from both the Horde and the Alliance, but a character from each race AND each class. Even doing this on just one character - trying to experience all the content from all the past expansions is a serious undertaking. BEST of luck to you though! This game has brought me some amazing times with amazing friends! I look forward to seeing your content. FOR THE HORDE!!!! Er... I mean, FOR AZEROTH! =D

This video starts long before Warcraft 1 or 2. When he mentions "First War" and "Second War" that was warcraft 1 and 2. Warcraft 1 was when the horde came through the dark portal for the first time.

If you want some more long form versions of the wars and stories, I would check out the flying buttress. He's got basically audio book videos up with some humor thrown in and gets a lot of the details through. 4 hour ish videos though

When you say the very beginning do you starting with classic?

Nobbel is my guy. he gets real deep into the lore. love his videos; love your video!

There were some inaccuracies in this video, and some things the movie did differently than the game lore did. Garona in particular has been innocent in both game and movie, but in the game she was mind controlled, in the movie the king asked her to kill him to end the war and she does so tearfully. Also, this video completely glosses over Suramar and the Nightborn Elves. In Shadowlands, you don't need to kill yourself to get there, we got into the afterlife while alive because the sky was broken open.

Bro, your voice... man, is deep. I don't know if you already work in this, but you could be a singer, narrator or something like that.

Video : history of WoW in 23 minutes; Reaction: 43 minutes Me : seems a few hours short

"Again, I could fix her" As an undead character for over 10 years, I can tell you her cuckholding spells are indeed that powerful.

I think it’s very important to note with Arthas and the Culling of Stratholme, the plague of undeath that was spreading at the time was very, VERY fast acting. So fast, in fact, that by the time Arthas got there, the people of Stratholme were literally minutes from turning undead. This was an entire level in Warcraft 3, you have to cull the city as Arthas, and while you’re doing that, the people are already actively turning undead. There was no time for another option. They couldn’t say “let’s try to find another way, let’s try to cure the plague before they turn”, their turning was inevitable and coming VERY soon. Had the city not been culled, countless more people would have died and become slaves of the Scourge. If you ask me, Arthas actually made the right call here. He did what a king must do; he made the hard but necessary decision. If you disagree, then tell me what other options there were. Jaina and Uther had none. They scolded Arthas, and then turned their backs, not offering any alternative. Should he have just allowed the people to turn undead in fear, pain and suffering? Allowed those undead to then terrorize the surrounding land and continue spreading the plague further, costing even more lives? We even have evidence to suggest that after the people of Lordaeron turned undead, they retained a bit of their consciousness while their bodies were forced to kill and consume other humans against their will. I dunno, man. People cite this event as an example of Arthas being capable of evil well before he found Frostmourne, but in this instance, I think those people are just not looking at the situation with any amount of nuance. The man did what had to be done, even though it wasn’t pretty. It was a mercy killing; there truly was no other way.

I'm loving hearing your thoughts man, you have some good insights. Definitely getting a sub from me! Keep doing you!

The culling of Stratholme is a full mission on Warcraft 3.

After this whole journey, I need to see your reaction to the Broken Shore cinematic.

Putting the work in to understand goes a long way. Well done.

Another great vid! It was a speedy vid you watched, but there's tons of lore he tried to cover quickly. For the un-initiated, that should make your head explode. There's probably hours upon hours of content that could be delved into (which the call to Nobbel is spot on for as I can testify I've watched hours of his vids lol). There's books, multiple games and expansions that make up the universe. One of my favorite books was "the last guardian" (really goes into the details of Medivh's descent into madness). My first raid was actually "Karazan" where you dive into his old castle which has some strong "haunted mansion" vibes. The war of the ancients trilogy was also quite good (basically when the legion first invaded). Anyway, hope to catch you playing the game sometime!

Would love to see you react to the movie!

The story is told chronologically, so even though 14 minutes of it are pre-WoW, a lot of those details are present in the lore from within WoW. You see backstory told and referenced in books and quest text.

So to give the "Player Characters killing Old Gods" bit some context. Originally when we did these things Blizzard implied that we just weakened them enough for their jails to work again but after we defeated the "last" imprisoned Old God in Battle for Azeroth they said that we did indeed kill them. Players debated on if we actually killed them or if the Devs are working us into believing they are dead. Also in certain cases Big Bads that are obviously out of the player characters power to defeat usually have context to how (Like The Titans helping us kill Argus, a newly born World Soul Titan")

"Jaina went crazy" Is perhaps an inaccurate way to describe the trauma of seeing all of your friends and your home destroyed by a group you felt you were on good terms with.

New fan here. Loving your WoW stuff. Keep up the good commentary and not just silently watching like others do.

So, Warcraft 1 didn’t kick in until the opening of the dark portal. The rest was all pre-games history, though a lot of it wasn't known until much later. So, the info is newer, even if what happened was thousands of years ago.

You’re my new favorite content creator/streamer. Cheers!

Warcraft 1 starts with the "First War" (16:59) - the Orcs vs. Humans. Everything that came before that is just lore that is explained retroactively throughout the game series and books. Which is also why there is some level of ambiguity about the events that haven't been directly observed in any of the games - there's been a number of retcons, continuity errors, etc. that makes the story somewhat confusing these days. The first game's premise was extremely simple: Orcs invade the Human lands and the Humans fight back. The second game was a little more complex, but ultimately boiled down to a continuation of the Orcs vs. Humans premise, with some additional bits of lore. The third game was when the story actually started getting more nuanced and complicated, with multiple factions, ancient lore, betrayals, plot twists, and a few retcons. WoW and it's many expansions have since both elaborated immensely on the lore AND made a complete mess of the continuity - leading to a lot of debate among fans.

Arthas's story was a pretty wild one. Storytellers love _love_ the idea of making those who are truly do-gooders make sadistic choices. Where every option is failure. To me, the lesser of two evil choices, would have been to quarantine the city, make sure that nothing gets in, and nothing gets out. True, this is a bad decision in and of itself, but it would have spared Arthas the heartache that led to his rise as the Lich King. I feel like with his story, he was essentially doomed at birth. All his actions would inevitably end with him becoming the Lich King.

Funny enough as fast as he's going, summing up not just 20+ years of a video game, but countless books written around the game, not to mention the Warcraft games before World of Warcraft.

You didn't see Aegwyn in any cutscenes. You've probably seen Jaina.

everything up to WoW can be played in Warcraft 1 Orc v Human. Warcraft 2 Tides of Darkness, Beyond the Dark Portal. Warcraft 3 Reign of Chaos , Frozen Throne

The culling of Stratholme wasn't out of some sense of offering the infected a mercy killing. It was a strategic decision If he hadn't done it, the infected people would have turned, infected the rest of the city, and then over the course of a single horrific day, a massive army of about 25 thousand undead would have started an unstoppable rampage across Lorderon, growing larger with every town and village they destroyed. It would almost certainly have been the end of Lorderon.

If you want this presented as a bed time story next to a crackling fire, read by a velvet voiced Dutchman, Nobbel87 is your guy.

If you *really* want to play the game from the beginning, I *strongly* suggest playing through WoW Classic first. Just so you can experience the game in almost the same state as when people fell in love with the game. It might be a little rough around the edges, but it's a pretty special experience for a first time player. An experience that the modern game sort of lacks. No additional cost, btw. It's free with your subscription.

29:17 Actually Warcraft 1 doesn't come into the picture until the 17:00 mark in this video. Everything before that has been novels or flashback/time travel scenes in WoW.

The whole point is the humor of the fast speech and wild condensing of the story.

Don’t worry, the Zandalari are ok, but their empire shrank to the places nearest to their capital city, which stayed above water when the old giant continent broke up sank underwater

The biggest reason we can kill the Old Gods compared to the Titans is because the Titans tried to rip them physically out of Azeroth. The Old Gods are embedded into the planet like parasites, so trying to rip them out caused damage (when they did it it made the Well of Eternity, which was Azeroth's natural magics bleeding out).

You said it was odd that the titans can't kill Old Gods yet players can. This is hinted in one boss fight at some point, where the Titans's method of dealing with the Old Gods were extreme (Flat-out plucking them and the ingrained corruption leaving a tough scar, OR slamming them in a prison watched over by mechanical wardens) and the players, whom were given more free will than the Titans, have access to more methodical ways, such as isolating their physical forms and destroying them. While this does not 'kill' the Old Gods (They're hinted at being so different that they can neither be alive or even dead) it does cut off their actual occupation of the physical plane, and their psychic presence is wounded. So in technicality, you can't kill an Old God, but they'll drop dead if their HP falls to 0. Only makes sense in context, seriously.

Nobbel87 is hands down the best and his narration is absolute gold

34:55 the question that everyone asked since it happened. Bad writing made Garrosh put on the idiot hat and just go full berserk mode attacking everyone for no reason other than he could.

Nobbel and Platinum wow are the Lore kingpins.

You know like 70% but you have the general idea. You're missing lots of small details here which isn't a problem (this video you reacted to was a hyper-condensed summary) you got the general framework You now know way more about the story than the average wow player :D. Loved the video Keep them coming. I hope to see your journey and hopefully join you. Remember kids Eren Did nothing wrong Illidan Did nothing wrong Emet-Selch did nothing wrong Arthas Did nothing wrong and Garrosh did nothing wrong.

30:05 it does make sense considering we're born from azeroth and azeroth is the key to defeat the void lords

@kingdomace id love to see you do a warcraft 3 playthrough its so crazy and so much of the Lore is spawned from that Game its a great way to understand characters and lore for the World of warcraft and its first 2 expansions

Because when the Titans Killed the Old God Y'shaarj they literally ripped a chunk out of the planet that nearly killed it that hole became the Well of Eternity

Nobbel & PlatinumWow have great lore videos. Sone even the tiniest of groups/characters

im sure someones told you, but that point where it says "now were in wow" most of that lore prior was from the first 3 rts games but also a lot of retconned lore

I recommend the Warcraft Lore Recap playlist by Lawllin. So far his lore recap playlist are summed up from warcraft 1 to World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth

PlatinumWoW has some pretty good lore videos that deliver story in an entertaining way

Nobbel87 is def much more digestible and much easier to hear.

yeah man gotta watch nobbel. dude is a freaking legend when it comes to lore telling.

You should probably watch the movie. Its not the same continuity then the games, but its a great starting point. And Trust me, he sumerized ir A LOT. He wasnt entering into details at all.

The titans cant fight the old gods, because they would destroy azeroth in the prozess. You have to keep in mind, that a titan is literally a planet sized being (watch the legion end cutscene to get a clue of how big they are or just watch the sword of sargeras ingame in sillithus). Amanthul actually tried to kill y'shaarj before and just ripped him out of azeroth with two fingers... it ended with a huge wound on azeroth's surface and the blood of azeroth, filled with arcane power, formed the well of eternity.

I am a proponent of said schism 27:03 as I roll play a High Elf ranger who is not happy with her homeland joining the horde.

this video defintely feels like it was made for people that have already played for a while, but havent really kept up with much of the story. There's so many things that players would just instantly understand and be able to put context to, but for people new to warcraft its very overloading

EDIT: Just wanted to say it's not your fault man. The video is fast. It would be hard for someone completely new to digest that. WoW's lore has a lot of detail. I posted a comment on your other video. If you really want to get into the weeds of warcraft lore? As I said, check out the war of the ancients trilogy. That pretty much covers history of WoW from 10,000 years ago. That includes stuff like the sundering, the fall of Suramar and the highborne, the demonic invasion, the relationship between Malfurion, Tyrande and Illidan. Warcraft 3 is really the lynchpin for modern World of Warcraft. Most of the stuff in the cinematics you watched with Sylvanas, Uther, Arthas, Thrall was set up in WCIII. WCI's events covers the orcs first invasion into Azeroth from Draenor. The 2nd game chronicles the 2nd invasion. It's worth noting the orcs were corrupted by the fel and Guldan. (This is referenced in the Warlords of Draenor cinematic where Grom Hellscream rejects the blood of Mannoroth.). Warcraft 3 is of course the 3rd war and sets up the foundation for vanilla wow. You get the kind of origin of the blood elves, the battle for hyjal, etc. Warcraft 1 and 2 can be bought on GOG if you are interested. I again recommend the Warcraft Chronicle books as they are pretty comprehensive even going into the cosmology of WoW. Also again recommend the Warcraft movie (essentially the story of WC1 albeit with some changes here or there). But I also realize not everyone wants to read a book and prefers a video. I've seen someone suggest Nobbel. I would second that. He does great lore videos. I feel they may be a bit easier to digest too.

The lore is significantly better than the state of the game today. Something to consider about the current version of the game is that you can't really experience previous expansions as they were in a linear sequential order like you can with the FFXIV MSQ. Whether this is better or worse is hard to say though. Some people hate having to run through the MSQ, but at least the story is still there if you don't skip it. You don't really have that option in WoW today.

Something i never understood is who build the portal to draenor to begin with

Nobbel87 and Platinum wow are the best for lore videos (imo), hell Platinum narrated the latest official wow video for Classic

41:56 Min.: Everything up to Shadowlands. The Shadowlands story is there fully missing and Dragonflight also is fully missing. Shadowlands cames out 4 years ago in the Year 2020 where this thing happens with the bat you know ^^

Dude... I've been playing this game nearly eighteen years and you are already better with the lore than me. 😅

cant correct all the minor wrongs in that video, but i can say that orcs turned green not because of drinking blood, not all of them drank the blood, mostly the leaders an so on did. they turned green, due too constant exposure too fel magic, going through the portal from Draenor to go into azeroth is what made them permanently green. we can kill the old gods bodies but they come back eventually, we always kill the old gods only with help of titan keepers, dragons or just the planet itself.

Nobbel87 is amazing at telling world of warcraft lore! Highly recommend watching him.

Bro, you need to seriously watch all Ingame cinematics in order starting Mists of pandaria, you are missing alot of story with those.

Ive seen this video before and listening to it again is just funny because he does leave a LOT of detail. You should probably just do nobbel87's video where he explains the lore of the entire wow universe because he has links to other videos in that video for specific characters or events while explaining the lore almost the same as the guy in this video does. SO its still very little detail (more then this one) but you can pause at any moment and go watch one of those linked videos to dive deeper into a specific character or event in the lore and then come back to the main one and continue it. However, from memory the big video is already 1hour 30 ish i think, let alone if youre gonna pause and watch almost every single in depth video, you'll be sitting for a very good number of hours. Honestly though if you ask me, fully worth but im slightly biased to wow ^^

One big thing this video did get completely wrong is the whole killing Old Gods thing. Mortals cannot kill Old Gods, all we did was push them back into their prison. If left unchecked they will inevitably return, it's not a matter of if but when.

This game's story doesn't always make sense and it never will, we just went along with it and is kind of the beef players have with the story. They retconned a lot over the years but this video caught most of the big important stuff as it is currently. I would recommend watching any video on wrathion's story, he was a new character in cataclysm, and he's still around, he influenced some events in the story. Another character's story worth looking into is xalatath..

I tell you this, if you really want to understand or dive in World of Warcraft history you should watch the trailer of each expansion 1 at the time and when you end the trailer watch in-game cinematics then hop to the second trailer, and so on, and you will understand it for sure.