Best timeperiod for WoW?

[FuxieDK]

Can someone please tell me, how people think WotLK as good?

T7: One rehash, which tainted the memory of Naxx, and two boring single-boss rooms.
T8: Second best raid in the game to date
T9: The worst taid in the game to date, and one rehashed singe-boss room, which tainted the memory of Onyxia
T10: One mediocre raid and one lousy single-boss room
VoA: Multi-tier atrocity.. PvE gated behind PvP...
Dungeons: AoE fest, where tank usually did 70+% of total damage.. Only HoR was slightly challenging.

Zones: The worst levelling experience, until WoD arrived
Gear: Everything was shitbrown.

PvP: Wintergrasp sucked so much, it underwent major changes, every patch. BGs was so unbalanced (compared to TBC), that everyone did nothing but complain.

We did get Heirlooms and Dual Spec, which is nice... But nothing else is worth mentioning..

[Speaknoevil]

This should really be broken down into patches, and it should be:

1) Rate the overall quality of the patch
2) Rate the content of the patch to the amount of time before the next one

[MoanaLisa]

I enjoyed Wrath the best at the expansion level. Lots to do and the various parts of the expansion worked together to be something more than the sum of its parts for me. Mists was not far behind.

[Deleted]

Can someone please tell me, how people think WotLK as good?

Gameplay mechanics, Ulduar, PvP, etc.

Most people just remember "Ulduar." Others, the great PvP we had at the time, their Class' Mechanics, & that's mostly about it. Only once you get past that do you start to remember that Wrath tanked after Ulduar, since even the levelling experience was fucking great. Yeah, Naxx was a recycle, & a really, really cheap one at that, but oh well. At least the Glory Drakes were fun. Either that, or extremely rage/drama-inducing, depending on the Lockout ^^

-------

Overall, Burning Crusade. Vanilla was great, yes, but I readily admit I was happy to see quite a few parts of it go in Burning Crusade, & even a few more with Wrath. If Wrath had sustained itself from beginning to end (or near end, as was the case with BC, tbh), then I'd have said that, but yeah..... Post-Ulduar, Wrath was just sad, culminating in one of the most jaw-droppingly stupid endings to a character I've ever seen, lore-wise.

Vanilla definitely comes in at a close second however, with Wrath & (yes, seriously >.<) Pandaria tie for 3rd, just because Pandaria was that good overall (granted, there's a lot of things I can nitpick about specifically, but yeah, overall it was a solid Expansion).

I hold very, very low expectations & even fewer hopes for Legion at this point.

The best time period for WoW was from Patch 1.9, up to and including, Patch 3.1.

Patch 3.2 signified a change in philosophy within the company, and they have not deviated from that change ever since.

This. One could call that the "Golden Age" of WoW, even.

[Triks]

TBC. WoTLK was the beginning of the end.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

Vanilla for me. Had the best guild of folks. The world and its concepts were fresh. I had a real sense of adventure and real pride in accomplishments. Everything in the game mattered without rubber stamps of approval. Server community was so important and so great. Raids looking back were so simple. But they laid the foundation of everything we got today and were less individualist in nature. Not to mention 40 man raids were epic. It would be a nightmare in today's world but I am so happy I got to experience that first hand with serious progression. I missed these days the mostiest.

A close, very close, runner up would be WotLK. It was the last expansion were I still felt the adventure and pride. Tons of folks around. The story and zones were great. Also introduced a lot of the ease of life systems but sense they were still new the community still exsisted on servers. Looking back I can say this is were recycled content started strong. I can point to certain things that became cancerous later. But at the time it was all pretty fucking golden. Not to mention Ulduar and ICC was and still is my 2 favorite raids.

[Orby]

TBC - WotLK were my most memorable moments. TBC was basically how the game should be when it comes to raiding, but as an overall package WotLK found an equel balance for everyone, it was just awesome especially from a lore nerds perspective

[tankbug]

Excitement and community : Vanilla
Lore : WotlK
Gameplay : WoD (always improving, except for LFR, which was best in MoP)

[Okacz]

WotLK for me. Tons of content, frequent additions, some of the best zones/audio ever, in some cases (Arms Warrior) the best class design to date, best raid (Ulduar). And probably the best chillout experiance the game has ever had, with easy raids mixed with more difficult challenges.

[Deleted]

TBC/Vanila ---> Wotlk ----- > Cata/mist/Draenor.

TBC was just awesome from a raiders perspective. Old content stayed relevant for new guids.

[Donald Hellscream]

A tie between Wrath and MoP.

[Vintersol]

Best memories: Vanilla
Best raiding experience: TBC
Best story and Setting: Wrath

My main concern about WoW today is the lack of rewarding being in a group outside of dungeons/raids/pvp. I liked the way it was, that you could play solo, but quite more comfortable if leveling/playing together. Currently, you have absolutely no reason to play in a group because characters are way too powerful.

[TheDeeGee]

I like them all as much, but Cata was the least fun.

[Deleted]

WoTLK for personal reasons really. For a sizable amount of the expansion it held onto design philosophies I value highly, while also being generally a fun period.
I always participated in Wintergrasp whenever I could. We had this one troll dude who'd almost always try and organize the group and we'd always win under his leadership. He racked way over 100+ WG wins by the end of WoTLK.

The sense of community I suppose. I came to know a shit ton of players on Darkspear EU before migrating to Auchindoun EU in 3.1. Unfortunately Auchindoun EU was the victim of a free realm transfer gone wrong. Occasionally Blizz would open free realm transfers from high pop realms to lower pop realms, for a specific faction.
Auchindoun EU had a lower pop of alliance players, and thus they opened up for the free realm transfer.

Unfortunately all the alliance players from the 3 high pop realms decided it would be a great idea to migrate to the single, lone server... Auchindoun. Looking Auchindoun EU up on wowprogress it seems to be an alliance server now. Sad times. I had very fond memories from Wrath.

Also MoP would prolly be my second choice. I dislike the features implemented in prior expansions that got through to MoP, ie. LFD, LFR, faceroll leveling embraced with Cata. MoP's dungeons were garbage as well as the scenarios. I love the continent, story, atmosphere and the daily quests themselves are really good, although there was far too many factions at the start of MoP. I feel as if they could've just removed August Celestial dailies. They sort of sucked hard with little lore other than "temple is attack, kill enemy".

[tankbug]

Can someone please tell me, how people think WotLK as good?

T7: One rehash, which tainted the memory of Naxx, and two boring single-boss rooms.
T8: Second best raid in the game to date
T9: The worst taid in the game to date, and one rehashed singe-boss room, which tainted the memory of Onyxia
T10: One mediocre raid and one lousy single-boss room
VoA: Multi-tier atrocity.. PvE gated behind PvP...
Dungeons: AoE fest, where tank usually did 70+% of total damage.. Only HoR was slightly challenging.

Zones: The worst levelling experience, until WoD arrived
Gear: Everything was shitbrown.

PvP: Wintergrasp sucked so much, it underwent major changes, every patch. BGs was so unbalanced (compared to TBC), that everyone did nothing but complain.

We did get Heirlooms and Dual Spec, which is nice... But nothing else is worth mentioning..

-Fighting the scourge once more, facing the lich king. Lore to care about.
-Death Knights (coolest class in lore, great introduction experience)
-Excellent class redesigns (example TG for fury, more interesting ret pallies)
-LFD
-The best music additions at the time
-More accessible raiding
-Going away from the "pure" class facist bullshit.

[Deleted]

tbc + the beginning of cata. (before they nerfed all the dungeons)

[Deleted]

BC, might be nostalgia i dont know. But i loved the raiding in it, i loved the gates you had to pass to get in to a raid. Sure it was annoying getting the new healer ready for Black Temple, or the new Paladin Tank ready for Hyjal. But raiding wasnt for everyone and those who didnt raid 25 man still had Kara and ZA. If you were decently geared you could run bear-runs.

In WotLK i grew sick of the first tier quickly. We manage to get the drakes rather quickly and Naxx was just a bad remake. Ulduar was amazing, and ding the hardmodes there was really fun. Working on Yogg +0 was almost as fun as progressing in BC.
Hated the circus, and the gated ICC, dont like how they felt the need to gate the progress.
The lore was great, but the Lich King was anticlimatic.

*edit*
forgot about the gating in sunwell, as i were not affected by it really.

[Soeroah]

Man, I can't even think of a measurement to judge by. Wrath was fun, MoP had great non-raiding end game, Cataclysm for all its issues represented an attempt at bringing the world forward into new lore, TBC had its charm..

[Zandalarian Paladin]

I voted TBC because of the lore, with Illidan, Outland, Blood Elves, Draenei, Demons. It just brought so much to the game that, even if I didn't play it, I cannot act as if it hasn't been key for the massive success the game has known.

Wotlk, for all I care, would be in second position with Vanilla. They both closed lore doors opened through the RTS, but they're also the two single greatest achievement in term of population. Vanilla had the biggest population jump, while Wotlk has the biggest amount of subscribers overall.

Then MoP. It was a nice change of pace - probably the moment where the game officially changed of mentality - but the thing I cannot fathom is the damned Pandaren. I just really dislike the lore behind them. On the other hand, they brought Y'sharj lore, which in itself is great.

After that, the infamous WoD. It's not the worse, because leveling-wise and graphic-wise, it's simply the best. Many also claim that the raiding has never been better, although personally I'm not a raider. But everything else was arguably bad. Garrisons. Apexis. Tanaan. Content Drought. Ashran. Cut content.

Cata was catastrophic, so it's the last one on my list. I don't think I need to explain why. Also, Green Jesus.

[Draculla]

Most of the people that left the game aren't on these forums anymore tho, and a lot of the current population are those who started in Cataclysm. On other sites the polls would turn out different

I started mid TBC and still, MoP was the best expansion ever made by Blizzard. Content was updated so frequently (faster patches) as a lore fan, this TOP-ed everything before - brand new lore, epic storytelling via single player scenarios, legendary questline, lorewalker cho. As a raider, first 3 raids where meh (maybe Mogushan Vaults was good enought to mention), but Throne of Thunder the best raid ever made, environment similar to Ulduar and bosses were awesome, especially Lei-shen, one of the hardest boss ever mechanic-wise and that fight was very well designed. SOO was pretty much similar to ToT, but that content drought makes it awful in a memories. Also epic reputations(that 5.0 were grindy as hell but 5.1,5.2 were good) and ToT oudoor content was the best content ever made - progressing as a realm to open new parts of the content and this followed by epic scenarios. If Blizzard decided to do the same thing with Tanaan, it would be the best zone ever (not that apexis shit).

If MoP wasn´t there, 2nd best expansion is probably TBC(I started there, so everything was brand new for me and Outland was beatiful place to level + raids were epic, different themes each one TK, Kara, SSC, BT, Hyjal, Sunwell, ZA, Gruul, Maggy - each of those raids were unique). But endgame was meh, just reputations and lack of epic storytelling (technology was not there to create scenarios and those epic cinematics like in MoP), but attunements were at least something.

Wotlk was cool, but ending was kinda expected since the announcement of expansion and this fact made lore like "ok we already know that we will kill LK at the end of expansion " and that character development missed this expanison, opposite to MoP and Garrosh thing. We knew LK will be final boss everytime.

Cata - really epic expansion, use of technologies in old leveling zones makes leveling interesting again with brand new story, new quests and 2010 technology. Endgame was acceptable but not the best and story was epic. Ofc, we are talking about 4.0 - 4.2. Dragon Soul ruined whole expansion vibe.