I came back with Shadowlands and never played Mists of Pandaria and Warlords of Draenor until the last two months.
Thanks to chromie time I played two characters in MoP and WoD and I have to admit I was blown away. Both xpacs are looking much, much better than the newer ones. Even the world, especially Pandaria, feels much more like real world than a video game map.
HOW? Is something wrong with me or was the quality/devs much better in the 2010s?
The cycle of WoW is always hate on the current expansion, then for some time after claim it was the worst expansion ever, then some expansions later look upon it more favourably, then it migrates into this old expansion was so much better.
Rinse repeat.
I agree to an extent but I do believe that there is definetly an exception with Dragonflight, which is weirdly been the expansion where I’ve realised that retail WoW is no longer for me, even though it’s decent.
My worst expansion will always be Cataclysm. But Ret was just awful to play until late on. I didn’t mind the story and questing though.
Basically yea . The last 2 expansions packs are competing with each other on how low the story and world building can get .
Warlords has a good starting story and the world is interesting . Only issue is the story is cut and thrown out in the last patch and it makes no sense . This is not obvious unless you actually played it patch from patch .
Pandaria on the other side had by miles the greatest world building in the last 10 years . The world around you actually changed as you adventured . This is also not visible right now as all changes are in place now .The story went from just exploring and finding farmers and secrets , to Krasarang Wilds exploding into war . To the Zandalari and mogu invading and than to just straight out the nuking of the Valley of Eternal blossoms and conquest of Durotar and Ogrimmar . Honestly no one could have guessed how the expansion would end when it started . Supper great expansion . No friendship sap . No holds barred . Adventure and action of all kinds .
Legion and BFA tried to come close to that , but failed .
Legion did at succeed in creating the vibe of a world invaded by the demons at least, even if the world itself was eh, outside of Suramar.
BfA tried but was a big swing and miss yeah, which is sad because I really liked the drust atmosphere (the Waycrest Manor is great in that regard).
DF doesn’t even try, the zones are extremely generic. Very bland.
To be fair, i’m doing shadowlands content atm and without the timegating bs it’s actually really fun, and i liked DF contetn wise, but story wise is a prologue for the world soul saga
I actually liked WoD. I enjoyed the garrison, and being able to really raid-log was neat. The expansion was criticized for not having enough (end game) content, but that fit my life really well at the time. It was the only expansion I felt I could properly finish without long grinds.
The cycle of hatred that is WoW…
MoP was great at the time, I loved it then and love it now. It got hate because some people thought pandaren did not belong in WoW and then later on during the content drought at the end.
WoD was great. It got some hate because people thought garrisons were antisocial, and then later on got hate because of yet another content drought with a lot of content we had been promised getting cut over and over again. What we got was amazing, it was the lack of what we were promised that got it a lot of hate.
Personally two of my favourite expansions, especially MoP. MoP used to be my absolute favourite but dragonflight has taken that throne now with the great new direction they seem to be headed in on almost all fronts and the great amount of alt friendliness. Only thing I am annoyed with are things like buggy zaralek rares that you can not solo and hourly once-a-day rares that have abysmal droprates that I am still farming for their drops. Aside from that I feel like we are in a new golden era of WoW after the disasters that were BFA and shadowlands, I am fully enjoying myself in WoW these days and have high hopes it will continue that way with how they are introducing warbands next xpac.
What puny said.
People crapped all over mop at the time. ‘Bla bla kung fu pandas’ yada yada.
Now those rose tinted glasses kick in and everybody is all dewey eyed over its majesty.
We’ll look fondly back on DF in 10 years nostalgic about how trivial wokeness was because we’ll be slaves to super intelligent mutant gerbils or something.
I joked around a bit back then but wod and mop are one of my favorite expansions. The world building, questing and dungeons all felt nice. And even pvp got some interesting stuff. Mop had alot of new bgs and wod had ashran before it got gutted to fit in as a battleground.
Its a shame they canned WoD for the sake of legion. If wod had all its scrapped content and nerfed the garrisons so people had to go out of it it could have been one of the best expansions. But instead they ditched the expansion to work on legion. And Legion was mediocre at best to me besides suramar.
I can usually find something to enjoy in Expansions. Or I just don’t play, there are obviously going to be things I don’t like too.
WoD was pretty terrible. It is very often listed as one of the worst expansions.
No surprises, the questing/levelling experience of MoP and WoD was well received even back then. In case of MoP partly because the whole panda thing was ridiculed months before release hence the bar was set rather low, so the expansion had the space to pleasantly surprise those who gave it a chance. As for WoD, the questing was about the only thing it was praised about it.
WoD intro’s got to be the closest to my favorite idea of a story.
Can’t tell you much about the rest of the xpac cause I haven’t really done any questing there.
I’ve done some questing in MoP for mogs, I’m not someone who cares much for the story but it was better than I expected.
Cause back then they actually liked making this game and the world around it 
I still remember video where one of the devs were talking about pandaria
and he was so happy about it
That’s the difference
Nowadys they are motivated only by money back then it was money but it was more about the legacy and good story telling.
You can see that in most of the movies or music or whatever art form you pick
I loved MoP very much (and said so on the forum at the time, not nostalgia speaking now 
). It was a very rich expansion, great worldbuilding, lovely zones, Anglers, enjoyed the professions (esp engineering), Timeless Isle… chasing that shark around the island on my raft was fun!
WoD had some great aspects, and some crappy ones for me. Loved some zones, hated others. More cramped zone design in some of them. Worldbuilding and storyline didn’t particularly capture me. Enjoyed Ashran very much. Enjoyed collecting followers, didn’t like the garrison that much. I was all over the place during that expansion, impossible to have one consistent review lol.
I think MoP was the last time for me where WoW genuinely felt like a world, instead of a collection of content to keep us busy. I genuinely enjoy some of that content, it’s fine, but I miss that sense of the world.
Thanks to chromie time I played two characters in MoP and WoD and I have to admit I was blown away. Both xpacs are looking much, much better than the newer ones. Even the world, especially Pandaria, feels much more like real world than a video game map.
Yeah, no. Warlords was awful. Sure, the levelling campaign was alright, although it’s not all that replayable if you ask me. There was absolutely zero content at end-game. And it genuinely killed the discussion about what the worst expansion was - at least until Shadowlands came around anyhow.
The current state of the game is much, much better. Granted, the point was about the zone design, and honestly, I’ll have to say I prefer Dragonflight - for the most part. I’m not a fan of the whole underground zone thing they did with Zaralek, and I’d love a zone more akin to Shadowmoon Valley in terms of general feel though.
Gorgrond didn’t vibe with me, Talador existed, Spires of Arakk was fine, but I honestly think that Drustvar pulled off the overall feel better. Tanaan was… Fel Green Zone #48. Nagrand was really nice though.
Overall, levelling campaign was nice, but not one I’d replay. Endgame was god awful though.
WOD was not terrible. It was just bland as hell, which is a typical response of Blizzard, because people complained for 2 years how they have to do dailies, grind rep and farm lesser charms to get bonus roll coins.
Due to the initial reception of the playerbase, they scrapped half of it to focus on Legion, so that’s your answer why WOD was ‘bad’.