WoW expansions ranked

Community General Discussion
1

WoW expansions ranked and why, my opinion, not including vanilla since its not an expansion. Share your own list :slight_smile:

From worst to best:

7- Warlords of Draenor
No question about it for me. Extreme content drought, half finished expansion. Entire zones not added like Zangarmarsh Sea with all the special creature models and the Ogre Island. Capitals scrapped. Most painfull was scrapped Farahlon. PvP was poop. Poor class design. Lots of bugs and server issues at launch. So many mistakes and missed chances. This expansion was a crime.

6- Battle for Azeroth
Loot is a big casino with rng on top of rng on top of rng. Nothing to work towards but everything luck based. PvP is poop with no vendors. The most poor and stripped down class design so far in WoW history except for a few classes. Only reason this expansion is not last is that it has more content than WoD even tho I feel its all over the place. I feel its already to late in this expansions life to rank it higher.

5- Cataclysm
The destruction of the old WoW world and the creation of the not so great new WoW world with flying. Introduction of new race-class options. 2 new races that you could play right from the start within new zones. High difficulty curve at max level at the start of the expansion which wasnt welcomed by everyone. PvP was pretty fun. Class design was good with lots of viable builds.
Deathwings raid sucked.

4- Mists of Pandaria
Alltho not really my kind of theme MoP was a solid expansion. Alot of content and things to do like the timeless isle, PvE and PvP all on this little Island with lots of treasure. Class design was one of the best of WoW history. PvP had a benefit from the great class design and was because of it one of the best experiences of PvP I had in the game. Only downfall was the long content drought after Siege of Orgrimmar to the next expansion.

3- the Burning Crusade
A new world called Outland, finally going trough that portal. 2 new races with 2 new zones to level. Paladins for the horde and shamans for the Alliance (I still remember how upset people were because of that haha). Class design was a lot better than Vanilla with Blizzard actually trying to make all classes and specs viable one way or another. Huge talent trees and the old WoW world and leveling. Extreme difficuly curve at max level troughout the expansion. Always something to strive for and never boring. PvP was fun. Isle of QT. This is above MoP because of the old WoW model with the talent trees, social aspect and theme.

2- Legion
Almost my favorite expansion. Loved the artefacts. Skill trees were just to fill them and not really choices but still liked it. Class design was great with legendaries giving special builds. Armor sets were cool. New class, 2 allied races, Suramar with loads of story and content, entering emerald nightmare, unlockable special/rare skins for weapons, Argus with 3 zones full of treasure and rares like the timeless isle, defeating Sargeras and the burning legion. They went all out with Legion. PvP wasnt that great tho.
But PvE was 10/10.

1- Wrath of the Lich King
The pinnacle of WoW’s carreer thus far. The vanilla wow world to perfection with awesome class design and class fantasy, awesome talent trees with multiple builds within builds. Blizzard really stepped it up with Northrend and the design team deserve a massive props for this. Beautiful waterfalls and landscapes, we all remember stepping into Grizzly Hills/Howling Fjord and hearing that music and seeing this new rich world.
PvP was the best I had ever experienced in this expansion. To this day I still remember me fighting in Wintergrasp. Defending the walls. Doing the quests when the fort was ours and killing gankers. Ulduar. The extra dungeons before ICC released where you ran away from the Lich King breaking ice walls. The buyable loot with tokens so you could actually get some pieces and work towards getting you started in raiding.
Defeating Arthas, the Lich King atop his dark frozen fortress full of undead. Best storyline in WoW so far and Blizzard know this.

My hope is that just like after WoD, a crappy expansion, we get a real good one like Legion. Fingers crossed for the future!

Whats your list? :slight_smile:

3 Likes
2

Worst to best for me

Wod:
Only expansion i took a break

BC:
Never likes it and we got elves in the horde cause of it.

Cata:
was fun and all but it was lacking and they nerfed chain heal which left me sad.

Mop: pretty solid expansion lovely quests lovely ambiance.

Bfa:
I Just love the quests zones dungeons and raids. And i can wack Alliance which is always fun. They also made Warriors pretty good at 8.1 and the seasonal affixes are awesome.

Legion: so much fun and they introduced m+ which has been my fav content ever since. Artefacts were awesome and the legendaries were Nice (aside from the rng)

Wotlk:nothing can ever top this for me. Classes were perfect for me and the raids so beautifull ulduar was a masterpiece and so was icc. And the quests gave u a Sense of dread in certain zones. Just perfect.

5 Likes
3

Burning crusade i got to level 18 i think (2 week demo trial)
Wotlk i only got to level 73
Cata i only got to 75ish(new character). And that was all dungeons

Then i didnt play till legion and got several max characters. So unfortunatly i gotta say legion was the best for me tbh.

Edit: actually i came back in wod and got massivly into healers. Think i got to level 86 only via dungeons. So i guess wod second

4

wod, legion, wrath, bc, bfa, cata and the utter nadir of wow … pandaland.
in fact, I would ask that you have a dustbin so that I can throw pandaland in there and reconcile it to the nether void. Utterly hated every moment of it with the one exception, the monkey falling in love with the undead gal … that was funny and sweet.

1 Like
5

hahaha I know what you mean. But if you can look past the theme that was pretty lame (panda’s etc) it was content and pvp wise a solid expansion. But agreed the theme was horrible.

6

My top three are Wrath, Legion and MoP in that order. Wrath is by far my favourite expansion and if we’d had a classic wrath server, I am sure i’d spend the rest of my WoW time in that server.

Class halls are the reason I rank Legion higher than MoP, but my favorite WoW zone is Dread wastes in Pandaria.

2 Likes
7

Best to worst…

WotLK - for many of the reasons above. Even the build up with the zombie invasions was brilliant design and more importantly it was fun.

TBC - I just recall having a great time with this expac, particularly in pvp. Even now it still has some of the nicest looking gear. Only topped by Wotlk really as the whole Lich King saga was superbly done.

Legion - Suramar and the whole plotline was brilliantly executed (aside from the annoyance of not realising I had to wait around after Gul’dan so still not got my mount).

WoD - I miss my garrison. It even plays the music I want it to play and the constant Top Gun reference by Mulverick.

BfA - too much of a grindfest feel for absolutely everything. As much as I may do it, it’s not that enjoyable. Ruining profs on the whole, the invasions and sharding fiasco, WM on/off splitting friends up from being in the same place. Too much deliberate gating of the story rather than it only being gated by the bits you haven’t done yet in your own time.

Pandaria - the novelty wore off pretty quickly. Yes we had kung-fu pandas if you like that sort of thing but the underlying message of war is bad mmkay got very preachy.

Cata - Just no. Thankfully with the scaling I’ve managed to largely avoid it levelling alts. The Harrison Jones stuff was amusing but when you’ve seen it once you don’t need to again.

4 Likes
8

WOTLK - you never forget your first:)

Then:

Legion
Cata
BFA
MOP
WoD

I didnt really play the last two. Pandas spoiled the fantasy for me so I wasn’t interested in MOP.

3 Likes
9

Best to worst:

WOTLK: Loved it. Had an Arcane/Fire Mage and it was just so much fun for two reasons. 1st reason, the specs were fun. 2nd reason, I felt like a Horde version of Kyle from Southpark.
Also, everything about it made me love playing Horde. All 5 races working together to tackle that big guy atop of ICC.

TBC: I loved it in regards to it’s feel. It was more of a blood elf > draenei expansion, but we got that Blood Elf Fel(ness) to it.
It also gave insight into how the Elves coped since the Third War and what the stakes were against them. Them being the Alliance and Kael’thas himself.

Legion: This is ranked below TBC, simply due to the legendary system as well as the PvP system. These were not great changes for me.
Aside from that, Suramar was the perfect story and helping Thalyssra and the Rebellion was great. I also really enjoyed doing the Fire Mage artifact questline as well.

MoP
Cata
BFA
WoD

2 Likes
10

Mists of Pandaria
.
Legion
Battle for Azeroth
.
.
Wrath of the Lich King
The Burning Crusade
.
Cataclysm
.
.
.
Warlords of Draenor

Best to worst, for me, more or less.

3 Likes
11

I mean come on, Wotlk was great at the time, but today it’s nowhere near the level of BFA objectively.

Mythic+ and mythic difficulties in themselves offer more content and gearing than all the pre legion raids did combined.

Sure, the story was better, but praising the pvp? Where you needed hc pve gear to be even competitive in pvp? And people were killing each other in seconds without burst? It was horribly broken.

Legion>BFA>Wotlk>MOP>Cata for me, I missed wod.

12

Wotlk>TBC>Legion>MoP>BFA>Cata>WoD

Cata after BFA because the fact that it came after Wotlk made it twice the car crash it already was.

1 Like
13

best to worst

cata-mop-legion-wotlk-bc/bfa-wod

1 Like
14

This thread has been done various times before, but sure, why not…

Worst to best:

TBC.
I hate the setting. I hate draenei. I hate draenei architecture. I hated the (almost non-existent) story. I hated the attunements. I hated the raids. I hated the dungeons. I hated the ugly, ugly gear. By far THE worst expansion so far.

Cataclysm
The theme really didn’t appeal much to me. The zones being all over the place was kinda nice because at least you got to see the world, but it was all too disconnected because of it. Bad dungeons.

BfA
Could rise or drop a spot depending on what happens in the next patches. Overal the main theme of the war is beyond bleh. Thankfully there’s the old gods and such. The areas are awesome, but the new systems aren’t fun. Whatever they copied directly from Legion is okay (but whatever they changed, they changed for the worse).

WotLK
Cool theme and story and had some nice zones (except Zuldrak - ugh), but the systems, dungeons and raids didn’t appeal to me at all. The argent tournament is one of the worst grind/rep/daily areas they’ve ever done.

WoD
Okay theme. Liked how the story was presented. Liked the areas way more than Outland. For what it had, I enjoyed most of it. Okay dungeons. Didn’t raid (not even LFR).

MoP
Cool theme. Awesome zones overal. Cool extra patch zones. Loved the story. Loved hunting for treasures. Loved the lore stuff.

Legion
Favorite so far. Cool story, nice areas (not the best, but they were nice). Some awesome game systems in this expansion which made the game a lot of fun to play. Only black mark on this expansion for me was Argus. Hated that.

15

Best to worst:

  1. TBC
  2. WOTLK
  3. Cataclysm
  4. Legion
  5. MOP
  6. BFA
  7. WOD

Mop could be over Legion mechanically but the theme just did not feel right for me and it didn’t give me feeling of playing wow. Legion had some things that made me really hate it sometimes (waiting for pathfinder, dungeons required for professions etc.) but just having separate class stories and class halls lifted it where it is now.

16

Best to worst:

  1. Wotlk
  2. MoP
  3. Cata
  4. TBC
  5. Legion
  6. WoD
  7. BfA
1 Like
17

There are people who actually rate bfa as second or third best expansion of wow…
I dont want to live on this planet anymore…

6 Likes
18

Thing is; it’s not done yet.

19

Best to worst

Wolk, cata(don’t know why but I didn’t mind it), TBC.

Worst…
Legion, MoP, BFA,WoD.

In no particular order of how much I dislike some of them.

BFA has many issues…too many. It’s not finished yet but I don’t like the secondary stat loss, I don’t like the way it was pummeled into oblivion making playing the game immensely boring regardless of spec, I found a random bottle in the open world that gave me 70% haste…oddly my retri paladin felt normal again so that’s when I gave up caring and just grit my teeth through raid nights as retri trying to stay awake and engaged.

WoD…garrison mini game…
MoP, while the classes were great…the rest of it I just couldn’t get on with at all.

Legion…you can take that weapon artifact power grind and stick it where the sun doesn’t shine. Utterly ruined the game for me, I like to play all 3 paladin specs, I like to switch between specs on my mage and my death knight and my warrior…that expansion basically said hey you can have 1 spec but no more unless you have no life.

20

Best Expacs: Wrath, Cata, MoP

Decent Expacs: BC, Legion

Worst Expacs: WoD, BFA (potentially)

1 Like