Best timeperiod for WoW?

[Exilian]

Which period in WoW's history do you consider to be the best and why? Do you think Legion has the potential to surpass them all? For me, personally:

• Vanilla - haven't played it, can't judge
• TBC - very fun but very difficult (or maybe I was just a kid hoping to clear BT with a 2hr commitment)
• WOTLK - very fun but MUCH easier in all regards, this is where I believe they started dumbing down some things a bit too much for my taste
• Cata - aesthetically by far the strongest expansion to date, extremely fun lvling zones and raids, but lack of content and big drought at the end
• Panadas - uh... it was pandas... jokes aside fun story, fun raids but waaaay too easy
• WOD - bad story, bad gameplay, bad garrisons

Overall content-wise I'd say WOTLK and looks-wise I'd say Cata, but IMO Legion may just trump them all if they continue down the path their going and dont accentuate our Followers and Order Halls too much.

[CaptainV]

WOTLK was by far the golden days, 12.5 subscribers, content everyone was able to enjoy rather htan a single percentage.

Theres really nothing else for it.

[Wipeer]

WoD has had the best raiding

[Crimewave]

Cataclysm T11-T12.

[Deleted]

Overall? TBC.

It had some flaws, but they could have been solved with much, much less negative fallout than they did.

[ls-]

Torn between MoP and WotLK T_T I think MoP, but I like certain aspects of WotLK.

[Flutterguy]

Wrath was my most memorable.

[Solarnova]

TBC stuck true to the formula from Classic, minus 40-man raids, every zone in Outland was hand drawn by Blizzard developers, the atmosphere and immersion present is double that of any classic zone, the music created is unique to each zone it plays in, and night was still actually night. It ended on a high note with Sunwell Plateau as arguably the most challenging raid ever created, thought that's debatable when compared to the original 40-man Naxxramas.

[zephid]

Vanilla and TBC.

[Nihilist74]

I liked MOP the best because all my favorite classes had a lot of cool abilities. There rotations of their abilities were fun. The questing zones were pretty fun. The LFRs were fun too. The dungeons were ok but the cataclysm and BC dungeons were a lot more fun. The monk class was a lot of fun as well. I really loved playing arms warrior, ret pally, blood dk, affliction lock, demonology lock, beastmaster hunter, and prot warrior during mop.

[A Chozo]

Pandaria.

-Gave me hope in the devs after Dragon Soul.
-It wasn't edgy, it had more depth. It was a war, sure, but... we saw individual things. Politics. Strugles. Weird curses. Cruel antagonists.
-The music was so neat. To this day, the Mogu theme is my favorite. So epic when you enter one of their areas in Jade Forest for the first time...
-With it, came variation in the scenery, leaving the European settings again for a different design.
-It had content. LFR had a meaning, daily-quest zones had lore... Damn I love lore in the stuff.

IMO, it had more Character in it.

[Deleted]

I started playing during TBC, when the old world was still pretty much in its classic condition, and it did have a great impact on me. However, as a Warcraft III veteran, what I was really hoping for was the confrontation with the Lich King.

WOTLK was by far the golden days, 12.5 subscribers, content everyone was able to enjoy rather htan a single percentage.

Theres really nothing else for it.

Pretty much this. WotLK brought to conclusion the most interesting storyline started by Warcraft III. Northrend was an awesome place, and the classic Ashbringer lore was also continued. The only things that bugger me were the mostly butt-ugly plate armor sets and the absence of transmog feature.

I keep wondering if WotLK happened too early. The best villain is dead; how to improve from that? Blizz certainly doesn't seem to know.

[geist0r]

Vanilla, BC and WotLK were all good for different reasons.

Vanilla had a strong sense of adventure, exploration, the world, and community.
BC was the pinnacle of raiding and kept the winning formula of vanilla while fixing much of the broken and unbalanced stuff.
WotLK had easy and accessible activities such as 5 and 10mans for casual and convenient fun, and kept the 25man raids for the actual raiders viable. It also was the peak of class mechanics.
Cata was underwhelming in every aspect.
MoP didn't fit in the theme and lore of WoW at all, but the gameplay was actually solid, minus the dailies. Well, at least as good as it can get for the "new" WoW (WotLK and later).
WoD was a complete shitfest in every regard except BRF.

Overall, the game was healthiest during WotLK. Despite the fact that the dumbing down and milking that eventually killed WoW took place here, it still offered good content for both new/casual and old-fashioned/hardcore players alike. But personally, BC is my favorite for the best raiding experience.

[Dungo]

MoP being too easy? How? Did you clear all the raids on heroic (mythic for SoO)? Did you clear the entire Brawler's Guild? Did you clear all the Challenge Modes? Did you hit Gladiator?

[Fynzie]

Difficulty mean the overall challenge that the said expansion has to offer, not the pinnacle of it, and mop was easy as were all expansions since TBC

[TheWindWalker]

5.0. No competition. The only thing that sucked about 5.0 for me was the amount of Horde-centric story focus and how we didn't really get a new world we got something that was almost a checklist of "this is what a wow expansion must have." People were blinded by the whole "panda" thing and a vocal minority of whiners didn't see it was just a thin mask atop Wrath.

[Selastan]

Late Vanilla where they started to iron out the bugs to Mid BC. With Sunwell came the first notable examples of obvious timegating and catch up mechanics, two of my top five "things hurting current WoW". So between buggy vanilla and the dumming down that started to come with Sunwell was the best time

[Goondicker]

I really can't believe MoP is winning.

I understand opinions differ, and MoP was pretty decent... but it was nowhere near Wrath or BC (imo).

[Klingers]

I'd say it's a toss-up between MoP (before the SoO drought) and Wrath.

I'm basing that on two things: Regular patches keeping players busy at endgame with stuff to do, and rich, lore-heavy gameworlds telling interesting stories.

I'm also picking MoP because I think it proves that modern Blizzard can actually produce a solid, player-friendly product when they actually give a shit.

Edit: BC was also pretty good and I LOVED it for its time, but I think objectively Wrath and MoP were better expansions.

[Ihnasir]

Wrath or Pandaria