Rate: Best > Worst Expansion on Raid Quality

[TheRickyB]

WotLK > MoP > Cata> BC> Vanilla.

[Jaja]

BC > WOTLK >Cata=MoP

[Aqua]

It's gonna vary from person to person, something might have soured their experience, or highlighted it, or they might have stopped for a while.


For me it's:
MoP>Wrath>BC>Cata>Vanilla

Ulduar and Sunwell both are smashing their heads against each other there for the sheer amount of fun I had, but Ulduar just skims the top enough to place it a bit higher than BC. Mist's I'm hard pressed to find an encounter so far that I dislike, it may change at the end of it, but for now it's flying high.

Cata and Vanilla need a spanking, Cata started out well and let out air dramatically as raids went on as well as some obnoxiously bad tuning and encounter ideas, and Vanilla was the trial period so while I can't fault it it should be at the bottom if there is any justice. And it is, they've constantly improved upon the system.

[Speedy92286]

Huh, I always had a hard time with these since I usually really just enjoy the game at the moment instead of trying to remember past expansions/raids. However, if I really had to choose as of right now:

MOP>Wrath>Cata>BC=Vanilla.

MoP is the one I am currently doing the most stuff in that are not raids, while Wrath is when I raided the most. However, Cata is was also pretty darn good to me at the time (whoever said FL is one of the best raids is not wrong at all) but I quit for a few weeks during it. BC is when I really started playing but I never did any real end game content in it, so I never really got much of a feel for it besides leveling up my BE pally and getting to like 67 in Outland doing a mixture of dungeons and leveling as holy. Vanilla I got my NE hunter to 40 over the course of when it was released, and a abit after BC came out.

The next expansion will probably be better to me than Mists, but until it is released, I will keep on enjoying MoP for as long as I can.

Edit: Hah, the poster above me has nearly the same sequence. I thought I was the odd duckling around here, guess not :P

[Deleted]

for me, in mists theres not been any encounters / raids i hated, but theres also not been any i really loved like the first time i did kara / ulduar / icc. but theres also not been any i hated like Hyjal.

[Hagseey]

mop>cata>bc>wotlk

Firelands ftw

[Edison]

Vanilla>Tbc>Wrath>MoP>Cata !

[Deleted]

Mop = cata = tbc = lk > vanilla

(But it involves tons of personal reasons as well, such as the people I raided with.)

[Deleted]

1°) TBC because it's where I started raiding and it felt awesome from start to finish (yeah, even Hyjal)
2°) MoP. I came back for the end of HC T14. Appreciated most the fights so far except in HoF. But nothing stands out for me yet, I'm still waiting for my Mimiron/Sinestra of MoP. Maybe Lei Shen HC ?
3°) Cataclysm with a GREAT Tier 11 imo. T12 only decent (didnt properly experienced HC Rag). And T13 will always be tainted by that piece of sht of a raid boss that was Spine HC.
4°) WOTLK. Ulduar stands out as my best moment in WoW. But I will NEVER EVER forget ToC...what a waste of internet space. And Naxx felt dull. No comment about ICC.

[Moggie]

Hard to comment on MoP due to the final raid not out yet but as is. TBC>WotLK>MoP>Vanilla>Cata

[Drithien]

For me it would be something like: Crusade > Vanilla > Mists > Cataclysm > Wrath.

Wrath has been the most dissapointing to me, because it was the time in-between the more sandboxy days of the first two expansion and the more streamlined days of the last two, where classes and specialisations started to lose their uniqueness due to the process of trying to homogenise things, without giving them much of the utility that came later on. So it was a bit of the worst of both periods.

I liked the steps that were taken inititally in Cataclysm and later on in Mists to make raiding content challenging on a unified basis, meaning without the need of many characters of particular classes or specialisations, group compilations, etc (talking about average-performance content here, not extreme cases as most are in world first races and such). Raiding has become far more sophisticated in a player-by-player base. Also new technology helps make the raid dungeons all the more exciting visually and even introduce new mechanics. But, the homogenisation is just awfully prevalent now. And no amount of (never achieved) balance will ever make up for this for me. Classes are getting increasingly more streamlined to the point of the game losing its role-playing elements, and I am not playing it just to bash some boss encounters as if I am playing a MOBA against NPCs. I want my role-playing game to have role-playing. Which is also the reason I dislike the absence of attunements right now. By the time I was attuned to Onyxia's Lair in Vanilla, I was itching to get a chance to kill her, because I was immersed in the story. In Cataclsym and in Mists most of the time there is just a boss that you may have seen at some point, that you go on to kill. Quite the letdown.

So overall, more sophisticated mechanics on a player-by-player basis, more demands of the average player, but less uniquness and not that much immersion.

The reason I enjoyed Crsade and Vanilla the most is exactly the reverse of why I didn't enjoy Cataclysm and Mists as much. Overall there was much less streamlined content, especially in Vanilla, and much more room for personal ideas to shine though. Coupled with some general lack of guides for a long time, and it made things far more interesting than now. Also, broken or not, I liked the sense of uniqueness each class and specialisation brought to a raid group. Of course, some specialisations didn't belong to a good raid group, but the potential to work on them so they would in the future existed. Instead of making them similar to other specialisatons with just a few differences as it is today. And the best part was that encounters actually favoured trying out things and bringing a variety of classes. And of course: attunements. I don't miss the difficulty that they presented to some players, or the time that they consumed, but I do miss the connection they brought to the raid encounters. And the raid environments were leagues better than most today. There's just not a single raid dungeon that can match the atmosphere of Karazhan. Raid dungeons may have become bigger, but not more interesting. For example Icecrown Citadel should have given Karazhan a run for its money. Instead it was a fairly empty, boring setting. Bright note about that is that Throne of Thunder seems to veer towards the right direction once more Finally, with the exception of Arthas, the first two expansions had the most interesting bosses for me.

Overall, not that sophisticated on a player-by-player basis, but much more inviting to original thoughts and varied group compositions, along with a far tighter connection between story and raiding, is what makes the first two expansions my favourites; Crusade slightly ahead of Vanilla because of more in-dpeth and complicated mechanics.

[Ciddy]

I really only raided from BC to Cataclysm. I was actively playing in Vanilla, but the only raids I did then were Ony pugs and the occasional being allowed to tag along with my friend's guild in MC as like their 6th offtank when they got really desperate.

Just from the 3 expansions where I actively raided, I'd probably rate them in that order. BC > Wrath > Cataclysm. BC is when my guild was at its strongest, so I think I had the most fun raiding in that expansion. I actually looked forward to raid nights in BC, and I don't think there was ever a point during BC where I got bored of raiding. Wrath was a very close second.

While I enjoyed Cataclysm overall, I didn't care as much for the raid content and found DS to be pretty disappointing for the endgame content. I'm back to playing after a 6-month or so break but don't yet have a level 90, so I obviously can't comment on MoP raiding.

[Haywire5714]

1°)
2°) MoP. I came back for the end of HC T14. Appreciated most the fights so far except in HoF. But nothing stands out for me yet, I'm still waiting for my Mimiron/Sinestra of MoP. Maybe Lei Shen HC ?

I'd say Durumu is comparable to mimron since they both take place in relatively the same place in the instance; they are both really unique and enjoyable boss encounters. You'll definitely like Lei Shen to, most people do.

MOP > Wrath > BC > Cata > Vanilla

Oh hi Kenny, grats on your progress this tier! You guys have come a long way.

[cyqu]

hmmm

im gonna rate the raids based off story,

mists will either be 2nd or first depending on how good SoO is, i didnt like the mogu raids or terrace that much in patch 5.0 but i thought thunder king and the mantid raids were awesome.

vanilla and wrath are tied because aq and naxx were awesome but so were ulduar and icc

cata and bc are tied because i didnt like any of them.

lol what are you talking about? how can you possibly base this opinion on story and rate BC low because you didn't like them? magtheridon, lady vashj, kael'thas,illidan, archimonde, kil'jaeden stories all in it

[Sarevokcz]

for me, MoP is (so far) best in raid design, storytelling and has probably most new content ever, while we are not even in the final patches. The main things draging it down are - 1. dailies required for opening almost every single rep and valor gear (they are trying to fix this with once per day rep from dungs and the zandalari rares tho) 2. Slow, tedious quest/grind leveling without comparable alternatives (dungeons, pet battles, gathering profs all way too slow nowadays) no flying for alts and no heirlooms - basically the epitome of unfun alting as it gets.

still, I would rate MoP the highest of all, then Wrath, then BC and Cata about equal to each other.

[Deletedaccount1]

wotlk>mop>cata>bc for me. I didn't like BC sorry guys.

[wariofan1]

I take your point about two single-boss instances in one tier, but I thought Sartharion was the games best designed encounter to that point, and hasn't been eclipsed since. Designing something to encompass casual/PuG-friendly players, intermediate guild groups, and the hardcore server leaders in a single encounter was, for me, pretty amazing. Yogg-Saron also did it, but I don't think with quite the same panache.

In that sense it was pretty well designed yes, but the encounter itself wasn't anything spectacular to speak of, unless it was 3 drakes it was as standard as a dragon fight gets (although the lava waves were pretty cool.) I liked EoE better in that regard, pretty mind blowing to see the platform get obliterated at first, and it was a little more creative mechanics-wise.

I don't really think you can compare Yoggy in this, seeing that no PuGs really made it to him. In that regard Ulduar wasn't very friendly.

lol what are you talking about? how can you possibly base this opinion on story and rate BC low because you didn't like them? magtheridon, lady vashj, kael'thas,illidan, archimonde, kil'jaeden stories all in it

Problem is that they didn't do ANYTHING while in WoW, all of their lore came from Warcraft 3, in WoW they just kinda were there, waiting to get killed. Extremely unsatisfying to go in and knock the shit out of Vashj, Archimonde and Kael'thas when they hadn't done shit the whole expansion, and despite being the expansion baddie Illidan really only did one thing outside his raid, and that was a mere threat or something like that.

[Armourboy]

Hmm its always tough because I think Vanilla is from a completely different era and TBC gets that somewhat too, although people are more favorable to it.

I guess just going off of what I've found over they years I would say TBC > Wrath > MoP > Cata. Then there is Vanilla off by itself.

TBC had overall the best mix of access vs toughness once the prereques were dropped, and without saying Kara may still be my favorite raid of all time. I actually enjoyed all the raids in Wrath, even if Naxx and ToC were a bit too easy. MoP I've enjoyed quite alot, and depending on the last raid it could definitely move up the list, although not really go down. Cata I just didn't like because so much of it felt recycled as far as who the bosses were, just wasn't much excitement there.

TBH Vanilla was such a different beast in terms of man power, boss fights, and just general thoughts on how raiding should work that I don't think its even comparative. Raiding then was very much an old school MMO playstyle slightly updated compared to the rest.

[Ishimada]

I never raided in Vanilla or BC, so I rank:

MoP > Wrath > Cata.

[Palmz]

MoP > Vanilla > TBC > Cata > Wrath

MoP has been fantastic so far. Vanilla had zero bad raids. Burning Crusade had too many 1-2 boss raids and Mount Hyjal. Cata had Dragon Soul. Wrath had ToC and the revamp of Naxx. Although Naxx was one of my favorite raids, I completely cleared it before BC and was really disinterested. My decision on MoP can change if the 5.4 raid isn't any good.