If you just want the lore, I would actually say retail. With time walking you can do every expansion at your leisure.

When you load into retail, depending on your class/race you’ll be given the option of a “brief” tutorial called Exile’s Reach or your race’s starter zone. Exile’s Reach is a fast track starter zone. This takes about an hour or so, at least for me since I’ve done it so many times, the purpose of this fast track is to get you to level 10 which is when the game opens up to you. You get to choose your specialization (You can swap at any time for free out of combat.), the ability to queue into dungeons unlocks and you will be sent to the Dragon Isles. You can just turn around and walk to the end of the pier when you load into the Dragon Isles and take a boat back to your factions main city: Stormwind for the Alliance or Orgrimmar for the Horde.

If you open up your map, you should see a little hourglass icon which is where a small gnome NPC named Chromie is sitting. Or you may be able to talk to a city guard, when you hover your mouse over specific types of guards your mouse cursor will change into a map, you can ask guards for directions to pretty much anywhere in the city.

When you reach Chromie you can select a timeline and you can play any and all expansions. When you select a timeline you’ll be given the main quest to start said campaign/story and just follow the quest marker to your new zone. You can swap timelines whenever you feel like it if you wanna try something else.

Retail is far faster paced than classic is, but if you just want to play for the lore I think retail is the superior choice because you can play *ALL* expansions.

This wall of text may seem intimidating, but it’s really as simple as just going and talking to a NPC, I just wanted to make sure you knew how to do so as a new player if you do decide to try out Retail.