Elwynn Forest
Northshire, Goldshire and the farms, mines and camps around them
"Why are there kobolds inside all the mines?"
"Who are the bandits wearing red masks?"
Hear the story of where you are
The capitals, starting zones and dungeons, 43 of the places you'll visit most, come with narrated intros, plus 109 narrated answers to the questions new players ask first. Press Listen, or turn on flight narration and hear each zone's story while you fly over it. Everywhere else, Listen reads the answer aloud in the game voice.
Want a different narrator, or to lend your own voice? See narration voices.
Want Lore Forever in your language? See the languages, or help translate it into yours.
Three of the narrations, exactly as they play in game:
Read along
Stormwind City. Stormwind City is the bustling capital of the Kingdom of Stormwind and the premier human bastion in the world following the fall of Lordaeron. Rebuilt from ashes by the Stonemasons Guild after its destruction in the First War, its magnificent white stone districts now house the heart of the Grand Alliance. Beneath its majestic canals and cathedrals, however, the city grapples with the sudden disappearance of King Varian Wrynn and brewing political intrigue. Founded over a millennium ago by the descendants of the Arathi, Stormwind stood for generations as a flourishing, self-sufficient realm. That golden era ended when the Orcish Horde poured through the Dark Portal, laying waste to the southern continent and razing the capital to the ground in the First War. Survivors led by Sir Anduin Lothar fled north across the Great Sea to Lordaeron. Following the Horde's defeat in the Second War, King Terenas Menethil II and the Alliance funded a complete reconstruction. The Stonemasons Guild painstakingly rebuilt the capital into New Stormwind—a gleaming citadel of polished white stone and canal-laced boroughs.
Read along
Zephras Isle. Zephras Isle is a flying island suspended within Skywall, the Elemental Plane of air. It serves as the ancestral starting home of the Skyborne, whose society now faces an existential crisis as the island's sustaining magic steadily erodes. With contact severed from neighboring sky-realms, its inhabitants struggle against elemental collapse and arriving refugees. Zephras Isle is an isolated landmass adrift in the endless winds of Skywall. For generations, the Skyborne lived here alongside native air elementals who helped preserve the magical currents holding the isle aloft. However, several centuries ago, those elemental stewards vanished entirely. Deprived of their presence and guardianship, the latent enchantments upholding the land have slowly begun to fail, causing Zephras to slowly fracture and destabilize.
Read along
Durotar. Durotar is the arid, red-rock homeland founded by Warchief Thrall following the Third War, named in honor of his father, Durotan. Bounded by the Southfury River and the Great Sea, it serves as the heartland of the New Horde and the proving ground for young orcs and Darkspear trolls. Within its harsh canyons lie fortified settlements like Razor Hill, the sprawling warrior city of Orgrimmar, and entrenched hostile holdouts ranging from quilboar tribes to stranded Alliance troops. When Thrall led his people across the Great Sea to Kalimdor, he deliberately sought an untamed frontier where the orcs could carve out an honest existence through labor and grit rather than conquest. Durotar's cracked red soil, baked gullies, and towering red-rock spires remind the orcs deeply of Draenor before its destruction. While the climate is unforgiving, offering little arable land and sparse water, the Horde embraced the landscape's natural defense and austere majesty. Bordered to the west across the Southfury River by the open Barrens and to the north by the ruined wilderness of Azshara, Durotar stands as living proof that the orcs have forged their own destiny.
Ask about what's around you
The panel already knows your zone, your quests and your target, and suggests questions to start with. Type your own and matching questions drop down as you go. Every answer ends with follow-ups, so you can keep pulling the thread.
- "Who is this guy?" means your target.
- Typos in names are fine. You don't need to spell every NPC right.
- No made-up answers. If it isn't sure, it asks "Did you mean..." instead.
Who is Edwin VanCleef?
He is the mastermind behind the Defias Brotherhood and the former Guildmaster of the Stonemasons. He is the master architect who rebuilt Stormwind City after the Horde destroyed it during the First War.
Where it works
Every zone, city and dungeon you can reach up to level 30: the quests, NPCs, subzones and bosses, about 3,460 entries in all. That includes the content that's new in Forever. Above level 30 you still get place lore (the zone, its subzones and notable characters), for when you wander ahead. Built for the WoW Forever beta and the full launch on November 4, 2026.
Zephras Isle New in Forever
Home of the Skyborne
"Who are the Skyborne?"
"Why is Zephras Isle falling apart?"
The Deadmines Dungeon
Beneath Moonbrook, home of the Defias Brotherhood
"What is being built in Ironclad Cove?"
"Where is the entrance to the Deadmines located?"
Hall of Thanes Dungeon New in Forever
One of Forever's new dungeons, primer included
"What bosses are inside the Hall of Thanes?"
"How do I gain access to the Hall of Thanes?"
Levels 30 to 60
Place lore for the rest of the world: each zone, its subzones and notable characters. Tell us where you want full quest and NPC lore next.
Vote on DiscordZone lore, quest lore and storyline for WoW Forever
Ever finish a quest chain and realize you have no idea why you just killed forty gnolls? Lore Forever gives you the story behind what you're doing, without alt-tabbing to a wiki.
The first time you log in, pick a key to open it, like M for the map. Hover over an NPC and press it to read about them. The panel already knows where you are and what you're working on: it suggests questions about your zone and your quests, and you can type your own. Answers link to related people, places and events, so you can keep pulling the thread as far as you like.
Lore wherever you look
- Tooltips. NPCs and mobs get a one-line story. Items tell you "Needed for your quest" or "Starts a quest", and only ever name quests you already have, so nothing is spoiled.
- Quests. A Lore button on the quest dialog and in the quest log opens the story behind that quest.
- Zone hints. Entering a zone puts a clickable question in chat. Turn it off with
/lore nudge. - Always in reach. Your key, the minimap book, the add-on compartment, or
/lore.
Dungeon primers
Walk into a dungeon and chat links a primer: why you're there, the bosses in order, and what beating the final boss means (tagged as a spoiler, so it's your call).
True to Forever
Forever has its own timeline, so Lore Forever sticks to it: no story from retail's later expansions, and where Forever and Classic disagree, Forever wins.
Free and offline
Everything is inside the add-on. No account, no extra app, nothing to sign up for.
Commands
/lore or /lf | Open or close the panel |
/lore <question> | Ask straight from chat, e.g. /lore why is westfall so poor |
/lore key | Choose the key that opens the panel (/lore key narrate: a key that plays narration) |
/lore narrations | Every recorded narration, your starting area first |
/lore options | Settings: tooltips, hints, flight narration |
/lore primer | Dungeon primer for where you are |
/lore listen | Read the last answer aloud |
/lore narrate | Flight narration on or off |
/lore help | List all commands |
Install
With the CurseForge app (easiest)
Lore Forever is on CurseForge, so the app can install it and keep it updated:
- In the CurseForge app, open World of Warcraft and pick your Forever install. If it isn't listed,
add your
_classic_beta_folder, or use the installer or zip below. - Search for Lore Forever and click Install, or click Get it on CurseForge at the top of this page.
- Start the game. On the character screen, open AddOns and make sure Lore Forever is ticked.
With the Windows installer
- Click Windows installer at the top of this page and run
LoreForever-Setup.exe. It's signed; Windows shows the publisher as Mei Liu. - If Windows shows a SmartScreen prompt, click More info, then Run anyway. (New publishers can see this for a few weeks.)
- It finds your World of Warcraft folder and installs into
_classic_beta_\Interface\AddOns. No admin rights needed. To update later, run a newer installer. - Restart WoW (or
/reloadif you're already in game).
With the zip
- Click zip at the top of this page to get
LoreForever.zip. - Open your WoW folder, then
_classic_beta_\Interface\AddOns(createInterface\AddOnsif it isn't there). On Windows the default isC:\Program Files (x86)\World of Warcraft\_classic_beta_\Interface\AddOns. - Unzip so you end up with
...\AddOns\LoreForever\LoreForever.toc. A doubled folder likeAddOns\LoreForever\LoreForever\won't load. - Restart WoW (or
/reloadif you're already in game).
On your first login it asks you to pick a key for the panel. You can change it later with /lore key.
Not showing up? On the character screen, click AddOns and tick Load out of date AddOns.
Known limits
- Above level 30: zones get place lore (the zone, subzones and notable characters), not quest-by-quest lore yet. Mount Hyjal isn't covered yet.
- Questions: it answers from its built-in lore library. When it can't find a good match it says so or asks "Did you mean...". Asking with a name ("Who is Hogger?") works best.
- Forever-only quests: some quests new in Forever may show "(no lore yet)".
- Settings may reset: the Forever beta has a known bug where add-on settings don't always load back after you log out. That's on the game side.
- Beta client: built for build 1.60.1. Game patches can break things, so please report problems.
Changelog
0.5.0
- Your journey: the new Journey tab keeps track of what your character has done: the places you discover and how you got there, the people you meet, the quests you finish, the foes and dungeon bosses you defeat and the books you read. It shows your recent moments, the bosses you've beaten and the foes you've fought most. It stays on your PC; Options › Remember my journey turns it off.
/lore journeyopens it. You can copy and paste your journey record: "Copy my journey record" on the Journey tab gives you all of it as plain text. - Your journey remembers more: reputation changes, new mounts and spells, rare finds and quest rewards, profession milestones (75, 150, 225 and 300), rare foes and your screenshots now show among your recent moments. It also notes where you've walked on the map in your last five sessions. Like the rest of your journey, it stays on your PC.
- Hundreds more narrations, in both voices: 25 new zone stories come with the add-on. The places and people of the capitals, the starting zones, the level 10-19 zones and some of the level 20s are narrated in two optional packs, Alliance lands and Horde lands, at loreforeverwow.com/voices or in the complete download. When you enter a zone whose narrations you don't have, the add-on says once which pack has them (Options › Narration pack hints turns that off).
- The female narrator comes with every release now: her core and lands packs are at loreforeverwow.com/voices and on the GitHub release.
- Narrations now say Deadmines, Feralas, Astranaar, Razorfen Kraul, Faol, Quel'Thalas and Iceshard properly.
- The Narrations tab groups narrations by zone, with where you are and your starting zone first.
- Translators can see their work in game right away: on loreforeverwow.com/translate/dashboard, press "Download my test pack", unzip it into Interface\AddOns and pick your language in Options. Your saved lines show in game on top of the language pack (or on their own) before the next language update.
- Tell us when an answer is wrong: every answer now has a check and a cross under it. The cross asks what was wrong (wrong, didn't answer your question, a spoiler, later-expansion lore, or something else) with an optional note, and "Copy report" gives you a link to paste into your browser or our Discord. It sends your question, where you were and the answer you got, never your character's name.
/lore reportdoes the same for the last answer. - Options › Language now says where to get language packs: loreforeverwow.com/translate, the same way the narration voices point to loreforeverwow.com/voices.
- Corrected lore in 126 entries and removed 11 that belonged to later expansions.
- Places that share a name, like the Canals of Stormwind and of the Undercity: asking about one now answers about the one in the zone you name, or else the one in the zone you're in.
- Narrators: the upload page (loreforeverwow.com/voices/studio) now has "Download my test pack", so you can hear your own recordings in game before you send them.
- Upload a whole zip or folder: narrators can drop all their recordings at once on the upload page, and translators who work offline can drop their edited kit on the translation dashboard. You see what's new, what changes and what can't be used before anything is saved, and it's in your test pack right away. No more sharing a Drive link (that still works if you prefer it).
- Answers know your journey: the story of a quest you've finished, someone you've met or a place you've been now opens with a line like "You finished this at level 12, 3 days ago, in a group." A quest's own twists show without the spoiler warning once you've finished it, and the people you met this session and the quests you've done in the zone come up first. Turning off Remember my journey in Options turns this off too.
0.4.0
- Corrected 275 lore entries: wrong names, races and places, zone details from the wrong era, and story twists that now stay behind the spoiler button.
- Dungeon bosses, one click away: target a boss and click the book or minimap button (or press your Lore key) and Lore Forever opens on that boss's story. Inside a dungeon, the Here tab lists its bosses in the order you meet them, with play, + and "Queue all", and the dungeon primer's "Who you'll face" names are now clickable. A boss's ending stays behind the spoiler button.
- Every dungeon boss is narrated (52 in all): hear who they are and why they're there, from the Deadmines to the Scarlet Monastery, spoiler-free. Find them in the Here tab inside a dungeon, or under each dungeon in the Narrations tab. The female narrator (version 1.1.1 on the Voices page) reads them too.
- Baron Aquanis and Bazil Thredd now have stories of their own, so asking about them no longer answers with the quest about them.
- The narrator now says Lordaeron and Gnomeregan the way players do.
- Narration playlist: press the green + on any narration in the Narrations tab (or "Add to playlist" on a narrated answer) to queue it. The new Playlist tab shows what's playing and what's next, and lets you reorder, remove or clear it all. Narrations play one after another with Prev, Pause and Next in the Now playing bar. Playing something else pauses the playlist. New key bindings: "Play/pause narration playlist" and "Next narration".
- Flight narration no longer cuts itself off: each zone's story joins your playlist, so flying over several zones quickly plays them one after another instead of dropping the one that was playing.
- Book and minimap buttons: click opens Lore Forever and right-click opens (or closes) its options, as before. New: Shift-click plays or pauses your playlist, and Shift-right-click skips to the next narration. With an empty playlist, Shift-click (or the play/pause key) plays everything narrated where you are. The book glows and the minimap button's ring turns green while something plays, and the tooltip says what's playing.
- The minimap button is now on by default (it's turned on once after this update; switch it off in Options).
- Pressing your Lore key while hovering someone with lore now always opens their story. Before, it only worked for a couple of seconds after the tooltip appeared, and not at all with tooltip lore turned off.
- The Lore Forever window can be resized narrower (down to 600 pixels wide).
/lore helpnow ends with where to ask questions, request lore and report bugs: loreforeverwow.com/discord- Item tooltips no longer add "Useful for your Tailoring" and similar notes to crafting materials. Notes for quest items stay.
- Ask the obvious: "how did I get here?", "what am I doing here?", "why does he want me to do this?" and "what is this for?" now answer from where you are, who you've targeted and what's in your quest log and bags. Everywhere up to level 30: every starting area, zone, city and dungeon.
- Ask about what's in front of you: target a gnoll and ask "who leads them?" or "why are they attacking me?"; target a person and ask "whose side is he on?"; stand in Moonbrook and ask "what happened here?"; or ask about yourself: "why can I use the Light?", "tell me about my people", "why do we fight the Alliance?".
- Lore for about 760 quest items (Gold Dust, Tough Wolf Meat, Minshina's Skull and more) and for every class.
- Suggested questions lead with those, and no longer offer gameplay filler like "where are the wolves located?".
- New lore for the first quests of the Valley of Trials (Cutting Teeth, Sarkoth, Lazy Peons and more), Shadowglen, Deathknell, Coldridge Valley and Northshire.
- Female narrator: a second narrator reads all 204 narrations: every zone story and answer, and the dungeon bosses. She's an optional download: https://loreforeverwow.com/voices. Unzip her into AddOns, restart the game, then pick her in Options > AddOns > Lore Forever > Narration voice.
0.3.0
- New narrators: every zone story and answer (152 in all) has a new narrator, with clearer pronunciation of Warcraft names like Teldrassil, Lordaeron and Gnomeregan.
- Choose your narrator: Options > AddOns > Lore Forever > Narration voice lists the narration voices you have installed.
- Community voice packs: players can record the stories and share them as a voice pack. Anything a pack doesn't cover plays with the default narrator. Installing a voice and lending yours: https://loreforeverwow.com/voices
- Installing by hand? Narration now lives in its own folder, LoreForever_Voice_Default, included in the zip. Copy both folders into AddOns, then restart the game (not just /reload) the first time. An old LoreForever\Audio folder can be deleted.
- Corrected the text of a few narrated stories, and the narration now matches it.
- Options page fixes: drop-down lists have a proper background, and longer text no longer overlaps the next row.
- Fixed a few garbled search phrases for Sister Aquinne in Darnassus.
- The druid quest "Moonglade" now links to Mathrengyl Bearwalker correctly.
0.2.2
- Lore accuracy pass: about 560 entries corrected, including wrong names, races, places and quest givers, and details that belong to later expansions.
- Removed about 260 entries for places, people and quests that don't exist yet in WoW Forever's timeline.
- More story twists now stay behind the spoiler prompt.
0.2.1
- The Windows installer now lists its publisher as Mei Liu, matching its code signature. The add-on itself is unchanged.
0.2.0
- Every zone, city and dungeon up to level 30, including Zephras Isle, the Hall of Thanes and the Ruins of Lordaeron. About 3,460 entries. Place lore for the rest of the world.
- Lore on NPC, mob and item tooltips. Lore button on quests. Pick-a-key prompt on first login; press it over an NPC to read about them.
- Dungeon primers.
- Type-ahead questions, "Ask next" follow-ups, typo-friendly names and "Did you mean...".
- Listen button and flight narration.
- Sticks to Forever's timeline.
0.1.0
- First release: Elwynn Forest, Westfall and the Deadmines, 337 lore entries.
Hear when something new ships
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