Best Era/Expansion of WoW?

[Dilbon]

The beginning of Wrath before dungeon finder.

[Thulvaso]

It was better than MoP for sure. But not as epic as tBC / WotLK.

Mists of Pandaria isn't over yet.

[wariofan1]

Thus far it's MoP, it's just so damn enjoyable. The best time for WoW was the beginning of Cataclysm though, but since the expansion went to shit with the first content patch already I won't vote for that. Vanilla was good, TBC was decent, Wrath was bad.

[Deleted]

I voted for Wrath.

Had my favourite storyline, best zones and music and overall feel, also had Dalaran. I will wait to see if MOP tops it by the last patch. So far doing good.

As usually, people will pick TBC without a thought but if you do some digging you will find that people wanted vanilla back then like people wanted Wrath back in Cata and TBC in Wrath.

There is one here, and a few gamespot forum posts from years ago are still around

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...rvers-petition

Uhh, no. Wrath missed the epic feeling TBC still had after the epicness of pre-TBC WoW. Everything what needed to be fixed at pre-TBC was fixed with the release of TBC and everyone was waiting on that expansion and they really lived up to the expectations back then. I know wrath also felt epic, but the heroics and raids were just so easy and boring after a while that everything and everyone burned out and you only was slacking in Dalaran. Wrath was one of the worst, if not the worst expansion out there. If you think about it Cataclysm even did something good about the leveling experience by giving the whole world and questing a revamp.

I think you need to do some digging tbh, wrath was maybe better in your PERSONAL experience doesn't make it top TBC. Really, it's way way behind, I know most people voted for wrath because they stepped in at that point.

But think back and see what wrath ruined for the game, that time was the first time people really felt like there was nothing to do. They felt burned out. I think most oldschool players quit playing at that point. Just queue in Dalaran and do nothing for the rest. Bleh. Cata brought the queue back to your capital city again and that sucked even more. We're still sort of in the aftermath of Wrath of the Lich King. It just doesn't feel like that big epic world to explore anymore like it was with pre-TBC and TBC. Although I think MoP is pretty good and we're going in the right direction again

But ye sure, according to the poll, wrath was the greatest expansion there was... ><

[Vyrd]

all cata votes are troll votes.

BC was consistently the best.
if not for wrath dropping off after TOC patch, id have said wrath was better.

[Deleted]

Wrath was awesome and all, but I'm finding it hard to believe that it's ahead considering the fuck ton of bitching about it during the expansion. But anyways BC for me, it had everything right, no nerfs to anything, rep from heroics, heroics actually being heroic it was for me the pinnacle of WoW.

[Zuben]

Wrath is close to my heart aesthetic-wise, lore-wise, culture-wise, allsortsof-wise. But Vanilla is still the best time period of WoW, because the world felt mysterious and the community often broke off from instance-grinding to do random stuff, like invade enemy lands etc.

Pretty much this.

[gingerlemon]

Which was your favorite era? I vote BC. Everything was perfect except resilience IMHO.

I'm amazed Wrath is voted number 1 since, at the time, everyone was proclaiming it as the death of wow. Brilliant.

The game is so much better today than it ever was, but it's not hard anymore. And I'm not talking about elite hard modes blah blah, I'm talking about questing, leveling, 5 mans; the core-experience. The base-line for skill keeps dropping and it's annoying.. This is a change in the industry as a whole though, not something exclusive to Blizzard.

[fizzbob]

BC, the expansion before GC got his hands on everything

[Deleted]

Vanilla for me. I enjoyed game the most back then. When i finally could get to the places that i knew from WarCraft 3 and 2, when i stepped into the Molten Core and saw how Ragnaros emerged from lava and when i finally killed Kel'Thuzad in Naxxramas. Other expansions (TBC, WoTLK and Cata) were at the same level of enjoyment for me. All three had very epic moments and very bad moments. I can't judge MoP yet, but i think it's going to be same as other expansions.

[Granyala]

Setting: BC
Gameplay: MoP (esp as Caster)

[vsb]

Don't know anything about classic. BC was awesome, didn't play much but I like it and even outdated it's best content regarding art. Lots of challenging content in end-game makes me to vote for it. Wotlk was good but easy and worst things (lfd, dumb heroics, introducing artificial difficulty levels) started to appear there. Also I didn't really liked all this cold theme with aliens, robots and stuff. So it's okay except naxx and 3.2 patch, but bot best. Cataclysm started glorious, first monthes were the most awesome time I played in WoW. Everything were challenging, no need for stupid grind, theme was awesome. But after 4.2 it was started to be worse and dumbification of fireland almost made me cry. Rest of cataclysm was pure fail, accompanied with lfr introduction. And about MoP... I thought that may be dailies are not required like blue posters were saying. But when I realized, that my gear which I was getting from raids worse than gear of one casual who has iron back to do all dailies, I just instantly quit, this game is not about raiding anymore and it's not fun for me anymore, so MoP for me is just death of WoW I knew before.

[Deleted]

For me, Wrath were the glory days of WoW, but MoP is close, let's see if it can top Wrath, shall we ?

[Grym]

I vote for TBC.

I prefer the "if you can't down the boss, you don't deserve the kill" mentality, instead of making normal and HC and now LFR versions of it. Also in TBC people that raid, push for that best, people that cannot down bosses, keep trying. People that doesn't even raid, happy with what they do.

Nowadays people seems to be too "self entitled"

[Paladin885]

TBC and Wrath, that's when blizzard really started advertising WoW a lot with their commercials. IIRC, vanilla never had a commercial on TV and the only way I knew about it was from the tech demo video in my WC3 battlechest, and it came with the 10-day trial of WoW as well.

---------- Post added 2012-12-09 at 08:37 PM ----------

Nowadays people seems to be too "self entitled"

god I hate that....

the moment someone dies in a dungeon, or if there is a wipe... people leave.

Same for raids, no one understands that progression is paid by with repair bills anymore. Oh, and everything is "purple" these days, even the kid who never entered a raid and only plats on weekends is decked out and at the proper ilvl. lol

[ReleaseDay]

Early Wrath imo. First 8 months of Wrath was great.

[Kissme]

I voted TBC, but only because I had to choose one expansion. For me I thoroughly enjoyed the game from when I started in Vanilla until Ulduar. The release of ToGC and toggle hard modes signalled the start of my dissatisfaction with the game. Sadly it took until a few months of DS for me to realize that the game I enjoyed was never coming back and finally quit.

I'm not surprised to see more WotLK votes than TBC votes, and I'm not surprised they rank 1&2 respectively. A lot of the people who really played and enjoyed TBC have been gone from the game long enough now that they'll see less representation and those that experienced true TBC raiding are an even lower percentage. The fact that Wrath was when a lot of more casual players got into raiding, which is WoWs best feature, will help lean the vote that way.

And for everyone claiming nostalgia - wouldn't the fact that there are less fond memories of Wrath and Cata for a large segment of players indicate there was something about the game that they enjoyed at that time that changed? Yes, you tend to remember the good and forget the bad, but I simply don't remember as much good from later expansions. I remember the bad from TBC (karazahn stress as raids went from 40 to 10 and then you had to form a 25 man team, specs being useless for various classes, certain OP pvp things (glaive and 4pc T6, hemo maces, warrior mace stun, 3 heal 2 war 5 man comps), shaman stacking in Sunwell, etc), but the good outweighed it. Wrath has more of my favorite boss fights, but less overall raid enjoyment. Basically, I had the most fun in TBC, thus I remember it as the best era I played. It's a strictly subjective opinion, so trying to dismiss it because it's not the same as yours is innately flawed.

[Rizendragon]

Wath pre-ToC

There were so many things shelved during this expansion because of the LFD tool being developed such as Balargarde Fortress raid (had it's own chat channels at one point in time) and Zul'Drak raid. The tournament was even altered due to a miscalculation of how hard Dalaran was on the servers. My speculation is that T9 was supposed to be more like T11 and T4/5 with 3 raids 5-6 bosses each , but developing new tech took precedent.

The bright spots were Ulduar, and ICC (pre-nerfs) These raids display the last of the large complexes that we have invaded to take down a big baddie. I personally dislike the several small raids that they are going with. Much harder to lose yourself in the environment imo. Firelands doesn't count either. It was 8 bosses , and it didn't feel like a complex. It felt more like a field with different boss compartments. Maybe that's what they were going for though?

In terms of game play, things to do, and rpg aspects though I feel the Wrath expansion hit it on the head. Ignoring 3.2 (ToC), the raids weren't super easy, reps were optional, and the rate of gear acquisition felt spot on. The zone music and stories are still heralded in machinima. Though I never played Warcraft RTS games, I felt that the Lich King was a great villain. He was very in-your-face, mocking your every step, and pissing you off in general.

Edit: I should add that Mists seems to be a step back to Wrath. I just hope that Blizzard doesn't give up and nerf things to the ground because of people screaming about things being too "hard".

[Kissme]

There's no such thing as rose-tinted-glasses (goggles, binoculars or contact lenses). Neither is there any proof that mentality exists.

Rose tinted glasses were used on chickens so that they wouldn't kill each other. They effectively made the world seem to be a better place than it was as they masked blood and thus bypassed certain instinctive responses. Literally, there were rose tinted glasses.

There are also studies that show that people tend to forget minor inconveniences as time goes on, but hold on to good memories.

Whether or not that mentality matters is more important than whether it exists. Basically, nostalgia simply means you remember more of the good than the bad from a period of time so your overall opinion of the time may be more positive than the actuallity deserves. However, nostalgia should apply equally over time to many periods of time. The lack of nostalgia for certain periods of time is far more condemning of those periods than it's existence for others. Nostalgia is a good thing, if you don't remember a time nostalgically, that probably means that time had less good than bad, or at least less memorable good than bad. And if something isn't memorable, then it's far less important than that which is.

[dokilar]

mostly a tie between BC and Wrath. wrath had a much more interesting story and questing experience to me personally, but BC had a much better togetherness feel with my friends.

stopped playing mid way thru cata as did almost all of my friends so i cant comment on pandaria