Many will advocate that WOTLK is the best expansion. The peak of WoW. In numbers of players it were. The game never had more players than during WOTLK. (but also the first expansion where numbers did not grow more than just a minor bit with launch).
Its a bit ironic though, that during Classic Era (vanilla) - many said the same thing about TBC. In my opinion WOTLK was the last expansion in the World of Warcraft that I enjoyed. Cataclysm was the end of my WoW journey.
Personally I enjoyed TBC the most and believe that is the best expansion. Not perfect but overall and due to everything you can do (unless getting a first in the raids is the only thing that matters). I say that even if I disliked the space theme, and would rather see more content in the “old world”. That because tbc addressed a lot of the problems with Vanilla. Things that we wanted to see in the game back in 2005 when we were jumping the roof in Orgrimmar not knowing what to do. Main problem was what to do when you hit 60… (daily quests, smaller dungeons etc… were on the wish list).
It was not that easy back in the days to find a raiding guild. So a very minor percentage of the players saw the raiding game. And the higher up in raid dungeons the less got there. I remember on my server, I was really proud when I had a full T2 Set in 2006. It was not like today where everyone and their grandmother have full Tier sets and a Zul Aman bear. The game mentality today follows a recipe of “perfection”. That’s a bit sad…
Back in vanilla when you hit 60 and might done the Onyxia attunement, got your stuff and done the LBRS and stuff, getting tier 0.5 and upgraded it. Raid was the only thing left. (apart from rolling a new char).
In TBC raiding became more accessible with 25 man, and even if you could not get there. You had Karahan and later Zul Aman … that could be run with 10 man. There were daily quests, and shorter levelling time 1-70 than 1-60
Also the dungeons were shorter and it was fun having both normal and heroics (for more challenge). In Vanilla they were amazing. But long! A dungeon could be a complete evening. I prefer shorter dungeons (even though I like to have a few long for the adventure). ( I think Blizzard could have solved that by splitting long dungeons in 2 or 3 when you had completed it once)…
But WOTLK. It introduced phasing, more storytelling, vehicle fights (that I hate with a passion) and easier dungeons. WOTLK started good, but ended showing many of the “signs” and stuff that would become the retail game of today.
Many of the boring aspects, are also the aspects that makes the world “alive” were removed. The world in world of warcraft was taken partly away (though it started softly with flying mounts in TBC).
I also think they really rushed in in classic. Yes I know some people will claim 2-3 month of a phase is enough. But many of us like to enjoy wow like e good wine. Not just drink it in one go. Original TBC was 2 years. I would love to have levelled more chars in a TBC world that is alive… Blizzard will probably rush WOTLK too so about a year from now classic is over.
A classic + would have been great, but quite frankly I doubt Blizzard of today are capable of making that good. Their developers are too much of a retail thinking. And I believe they will take the easy way to just release Cataclysm.
Cya in northrend!