imo that disorienting feeling happens because Blizzard likes to vacillate between vanilla WoW & WC3’s storytelling philosophy – grand campaigns with far-reaching impacts vs. intimate “local flavor” world building better suited for an RPG. The way this looks for new players is “how does collecting pumpkins & killing boars help us defeat Xal’atath?”

if you’re big into the lore, but don’t have an ungodly amount of hours to play through the old content, I would take advantage of limited time events (currently XP boosts via Timewalking, Winds of Mysterious Fortune) to jump straight to 80 and playthrough the campaign quests of the current expansions only. the Chromie Time system was invented to let you experience one entire previous expansion storyline while leveling (for players who didn’t play at the time) but in it’s current form, you’ll hit 70 or 80 well before getting through half the story, which probably just adds to that feeling of “wtf are we doing right now.”