Best Era/Expansion of WoW?

[Navoan]

I think TBC simply because of the community back then. I mean my friends list was near-full with random people I'd met doing HCs with or got talking to after a Halaa battle. These days I rarely even speak to anyone outside my guild. There is the odd occasion, but it's all about who can be the biggest nob in LFR or who can AFK the most without being kicked from the random HC.

Being in a group used to mean something, it got worse past TBC and it was a great factor in fun for me. Not to mention things like Hand of A'dal, whenever I see someone with the title I think oh cool he was there when people cared. When I see almost any other title... I just don't care (maybe shit like Firelord pre-nerf etc).

[Sackman]

I like all I played but I put BC because I spent the most hours playing then.

[Hawkyy]

Wrath purely because of ICC and Ulduar, best 2 raids ever. Also had the most fun during Wrath.

[Deleted]

I read the title and immediately expected to see pages full of people reply with BC. I agree BC was really good (I enjoyed every expansion including Vanilla) but I enjoyed my time the most in Wrath. Probably b/c I was more involved in raiding and I had a larger sample of friends who played regularly.

Probably the same here, I enjoyed wrath the whole way up but prefered it before the honor/badges changes, ahh the days of 20x tenacity bladestorming... I enjoyed BC and the fact that the raids required skill and that you would really have to do the older teir raids to gear up and do the later ones. Vanilla was brilliant andreally fun but nothing really sticks out, it was amazing when i started and thats all i can say about it. Cata, i'll leave it out.... MoP is shaping up to be pretty awesome i doubt it will be my favourite but we'll see when the end comes and how badly we ruin orgrimmar

[Deleted]

TBC zones, lore, music, raids, guilds, community everything was topnotch

TBC zones looked horrible, TBC theme was horrible, music was horrible, the raids were ok, guilds aren't expansive specific, community has always been horrible you just get to see more of it now.

Personally I'd say Wotlk. Music was nice, zones were nice, the story was nice, PvP was fun altough to bursty (but that's just WoW PvP for you) and I really liked Wintergraps with several full raids constantly fighting each other.

[Karnudge]

I voted BC....for a bunch of reasons.

Vanilla and BC were the only times I've played WoW and it felt huge, like a world, where anything was possible and the only way to master yourself was to go out and explore some new crap. Vanilla had the most amount of that, but BC nerfed some for the players (instance/totem quests and whatnot) but added some new stuff.

Vanilla was too hard. That's really it. I leveled to 60, played 1 40-man raid, and quit. It demanded too much from me. BC had the correct amount of challenge but was 1000 times more fun than Vanilla. Each class and zone had a very particular flavor in BC and it was just great overall.

I can't vote Wrath, for so many reasons. Everything was too easy. I think they wanted to make it the PUG raid expac but that mindset had a very negative impact on me as a player. It's also the first expansion that introduced a new class, and unlike Monks who I feel are redundant, DKs were made with the mindset of (lets combine every single character we have and make an uberchar!) which sucked if you didn't want to play one because you were happy with your char. I also hated all the zones in Wrath except for the Fjord which had awesome Celtic music. But BC still had the Nagrand music and don't forget the Diablo II music that was used in the Auchindoun. LFG was a good implementation though.

Cata....ummm LFR was a good idea....but the worst raids ever. EVERRRR. And unfortunately the coolest part of the whole expac was flying on a hippogryph to Nordrassil and seeing Deathwing come out of the smoke and torch your bird. Deepholm was boring, and the Vashj'ir was a big tease because we never fought any prominent Naga (aka Aszhara, but I'm sure we'll get there) Heroics in Cata ranged from being a joke to "Why can this boss wipe my party in one stomp?" I liked Firelands, but thought it could use more polish, it almost had a BC feel. A better expansion overall would have had 4 major questing areas, each on a different elemental plane, and possibly a fifth new one where Deathwing would be . Changing Azeroth was cool, but not as cool as introducing new *engaging* areas.

MOP is PVP fun! The two new BGs....AWESOME. I don't care that one is almost stolen from Valve...I'm sure Blizz feels justified (see Dota 2). However the Panda theme is awful (and a little racist), the character reinventions are awful (see Tyrande), and the Sha are bad too. I like that they put back some in world raid boss... but when I'm in the summit and the Sha starts yelling...I don't feel afraid. In BC when the ground in Hellfire started shaking, you looked around for that Fel Reaver and hauled ass! Want to make MOP more fun? In the summit, have the Sha of Anger wander around and smite people. When he gets close, have the player's vision turn grey as a warning. Gets the blood pumpin! MOP would be up there if not for the dailies. If you're going to make dailies practically mandatory (because people like having all the crafting recipes) then at least make the dailies good (see Isle of Quel'Danas)

[Pull My Finger]

Threads like this can't be really taken seriously. People never see the big picture. Everybody and their mother is gonna say TBC and a lot of people would go as far as call it "the golden age" of WoW where everything was just about perfect. But they don't realize that they simply take their nostalgic memories that they're most fond of and just add them up to the positive things about the game today.

You can't possibly call TBC perfect or the best expansion when we didn't even have viable specs for all classes back then - or things like dual spec. So many things about TBC was still WoW being in its state of infancy. A shitload of things that seem perfectly normal to have today weren't in the game back then. The whole systems design has improved so much since then. It would freak you out if the game was in its TBC state today. People kind of factor all of that stuff out.

Pretty much every incarnation of WoW has brought something to the table that you wouldn't wanna miss in the game ever again. Every expansion had its big pros and cons, each one of them was influenced by its predecessor, has directly influenced the development of its successor and has helped evolve the game in some kind of way.

[scvd]

The numbers speak for themselves.

[Kaleredar]

TBC zones looked horrible, TBC theme was horrible, music was horrible, the raids were ok, guilds aren't expansive specific, community has always been horrible you just get to see more of it now.

I'll agree that WotLK was the best expansion, but saying that BC had bad music is just... well, almost quantifiably wrong. WoW has some of the best music of any video game... It's been that way since vanilla.

He means that most of the focus in this game has been on things that were established in vanilla and tbc. The latter expansions didn't really introduce anything new.

The only thing, to my recollection, that BC added was daily quests.

Flying mounts weren't "new technology" in the least. The flying command existed since vanilla WoW, basically it was (and still is) "swimming" through the air. All BC did was slap a mount between your legs while you were "flying." If you hit a massive lag spike while on a flying mount, cancel the flying mount buff-- as you'll see, you'll be "swimming" through the air.

Wrath of the Lich king added NPC phasing, achievements, vehicle combat, and LFG.

Cataclysm added phased terrain

Mists of Pandaria added Pet Battles, CRZ, and scenarios.

[Felarion]

Burning Crusade because i started back then, everything was new for me. Also my 1st time crossing through the portal, Epic Feeling.

[Verazh]

these polls are so flawed... how can someone who started playing in Wrath know if it was better than Vanilla or TBC?

[Deleted]

Was Vanilla for me, the golden years.

Don't understand all the love for WotLK, it was the beginning of the end for WoW... The fucking dreaded dungeon finder, 15 minute challengeless heroics, infinite amounts of welfare gear, laughable arena seasons, year of ICC, brown gear design and so on.

Is Cataclysm and MoP really that bad, that you look back on WotLK as a highlight?

[Liliannan]

I voted Wrath because that is when I really started to understand how to play my class and get into the lore and story behind warcraft. I started playing towards the end of BC (summer 2008) and spent most of my time leveling and getting familiar with the game. While I did really enjoy it, I never got to experience raids or many of the heroic dungeons until shortly after Wrath came out.

[Shiny212]

TBC and WOTLK, with TBC coming ahead just because it was more epic to me to face the great names from WC3. People saying MoP or cata obviously didn't play, or were just insufferably bad and need the welfare of the new expansions.

Cataclysm destroyed tanking by giving all tanks free aggro, removing half the fun of tanking, (actually holding aggro continuously), healers were turned into ground targeting aoe machines, as opposed to reaction based single target, 2-4 player aoe heals, which made healing into an easy, mundane task. ALL dps has had its talents annoyingly gimped as hybrid is a thing of the past, personal choice is limited to useless utility in raids and virtually all dps rotations and mana/other resource mechanics have been simplified to the extent they don't require thought.

[Deleted]

The only thing, to my recollection, that BC added was daily quests.

Arenas, heroics, smaller (more managable) raids, badge rewards etc.

BC needs alot more credit than it gets.

[Nurabashi]

I have 3... Vanilla was amazing, only because it was a new world, etc. etc.

2nd would be BC, I mean, sure WotLK was pretty cool, and I loved Arthas back in WC3, but BC always brings me fond memories.

Lastly, the current expansion. I'm not going to lie, I'm loving it. Sure, it has a lot of imperfections, and Blizzard has made some odd decisions, -hem- DAILIES -hem-, but overall, for me at least, I'm loving it.

[bionics]

Close tie between Wrath and Pandaria, with Wrath slightly edging out the latter in terms of how much fun I've had in PVE; well-designed and fun instances and great lore being the major rationale.

For PVP -- definitely TBC. Arena was brand new and had that grand appeal as being a viable way of obtaining gear in an alternative fashion to raiding and the PVP seemed much more enjoyable because you seemed to be rewarded in matches for planning ahead/playing intelligently, as opposed to the mashing damage mentality that is more prevalent now.

[Liliannan]

these polls are so flawed... how can someone who started playing in Wrath know if it was better than Vanilla or TBC?

Its pretty subjective and these polls will always be skewed. Wrath is when the game hit its highest numbers (and beginning of cata) hence more people have experienced wrath than any other expansion. They don't know if it was better than vanilla/tbc because they weren't there to play it, they can only go off of experience - which is also why we will never have a definite answer on 'which expansion was the best'

[Mongoose19]

TBC no doubt, game was just perfect back then. Every class was unique and fun, pvp was very playable and we had best PvE content (mmm 5 man heroics). Wrath was bad, only thing good about it was Ulduar and nothing else.

[PetersenIII]

I voted for WotLK, because that's when I most enjoyed the way the game played.

However, my best memories are from Vanilla and BC.