Weakest WoW Expansion

[Iceman2500]

Anyone who says something other than Cataclysm probably started playing in Cataclysm

Started playing in January 2006 and I think MoP is the weakest one. Pandaria and everything in it just doesn't feel like Warcraft to me.

[Marmot]

Started playing in January 2006 and I think MoP is the weakest one. Pandaria and everything in it just doesn't feel like Warcraft to me.

That doesn't make it weak though.

[celinamuna]

WotLK or Cata

[kattarina]

P.S. I remember what the forums were like back in Wrath, all the votes currently going Cata used to be for Wrath lol. And now it's consistently voted the best expansion.

When did that happen? I too remember people saying that Wrath was the worse thing that ever happen to WoW and now people are calling it greatest :/

[Jigga93]

Wrath. i hated redoing Naxx and the year long ICC

[serenka]

Whoever said Bc u must of been stuck in Kara

Not a fair thing to say, I played all the way through tbc and I would rate it second weakest, not bad, but weak.

The story was non existent and badly handled, a lot of wasted potential on some Draenei lore, and maybe some more Orc lore, since it is the home world of the orcs and all, and the content was not accessible, raiding was the for the elite few, even heroic dungeons were only accessible to a small portion of the players, the only good thing about tbc IMO is the raids were good, and wow was still new enough to be exciting.
This is just my opinion, others may disagree, but as a hardcore player since vanilla that's how I see it.

- - - Updated - - -

When did that happen? I too remember people saying that Wrath was the worse thing that ever happen to WoW and now people are calling it greatest :/

I remember that, though I've always liked wrath :/ was one of the few defending it back I wrath times, though I stopped defending it when icc lasted nearly a year, that's what most people hated I think. Not that many hated the actual expansion, just rehashed naxx and icc duration. Ulduar and icc are two of the best raids In The game to me!

[Elestia]

Cataclysm: Though polished, shiny and started very strong with an epic story ended so badly. I would have been all about Cata if Abyssal Maw had been implemented and DS been a full 16 boss raid. And by DS being a FULL raid I mean not climbing a stone tower in Northrend of all places, and flying on a ship. Granted the Deathwing fight did feel epic, I felt cheated for only killing him in a weakened state, and having Thrall tagging along to take the glory for himself. DS is also a bitter pill in that there was so much story that could have been filled in better in a raid environment. Instead they converted it all into Three 5 man dungeons in Blizz's rush to release DS prior to the launch of SWTOR with LFR. (LFR single handedly took the wind out of the sails of guilds, significantly damaging what little PVE motivation people had, turning epics into hand-outs.) If not for DS, Firelands was amazing and so much fun, Twilight's Hammer /Black Dragonflight story-line and raid content also amazing. Legendary questline(s) done right. Cata imo, most underrated xpac.


TBC: Probably next weakest. Disconnected story, random races, poor environmental design with "themed" zones with no flow. Disappointing in the fact that it was never explained what ultimately turned Illidan to pure madness. Outland was basically a playground of randomness with demons-- which is why I believe most WoW "gamers" really enjoyed it, since things didn't have to make sense, it was just fun. For the fan-boys and lore nerds, killing Illidan just seemed like a waste, and slaying his generals Vasj and KT just seemed so predictable. However, because the xpac as a whole was so much fun and the raid content was for the most part successful, lameness aside it barely falls behind Cata.

Wrath: Amazing environmental detail, detailed story, interesting zones, races, creatures, cultures. Ulduar- amazing, the best raid created with ToT being a close second, ICC- not bad good features being non-linear boss progression, Naxx- fun easy raid to get people raiding (which is how new xpacs imo should be like--what Pandaria did right.) Not a whole lot to complain about. Overall deserves to be rated over TBC because of the quality issues that got fixed, and the renewed attempts at writing new story and content.

MoP: Best. The most polished of the 4, and likely the most underrated xpac pre-launch. It has amazing quests, storylines, race and culture interest, and offered more than enough content to be enjoyed by any type of player, not just the raiders and pvpers. Cons probably include being unexpectedly hard-core initially in terms of maxing one's character with rep gating of items, complicated with LFR and "legendary" quest drops and long VP grinds and daily grinds to boot. Guilds used to running normal content just fine that had been successful in the past suddenly felt behind (especially those filled with people with jobs, that only come home to raid and only raid.) This was probably highly unnecessary, given both aspects of deterring new raiders that just picked up WoW, as well as given the fact of it being first tier PvE content. All of this combined only herded the sheep into LFR-- which has had both positive and negative results.

[serenka]

Nice post above me, I agree with everything apart for death wing fight being epic, I think it made a good fight, but not as the last boss, and especially as the most powerful of the dragon aspects, empowered by an old god, was hoping for more. Otherwise great post, glad I'm not the only person here with the unpopular opinion of tbc being 2nd weakest.

[Deleted]

Nice post above me, I agree with everything apart for death wing fight being epic, I think it made a good fight, but not as the last boss, and especially as the most powerful of the dragon aspects, empowered by an old god, was hoping for more. Otherwise great post, glad I'm not the only person here with the unpopular opinion of tbc being 2nd weakest.

How can you have that oppinion? I think that is only possible in hindsight because you schould have done the evaluation under the perspective of classic wow.


Lichking>TBC>Pandaland>Cata in my oppinion

In terms of storytelling they would be in that order too i think.

[anjan011]

Cataclysm....the failed to produced promised raids, and DS was a fairly disjointed and confusing raid, that seemed to be made up of the scraps from the abyssal maw raid. Also we never really got to fight Deathwing. Plus, even though I'm horde, Worgen can't be shaman, and that is just crazy. I mean shaman are all about wolves and worgen are WOLF PEOPLE, and that was the biggest disappointment

Doh! When this precious bit of knowledge dawned to u? o.O

[Deletedaccount1]

MoP for sure, that's honestly the general consensus of people who don't post on here.

Its all a matter of opinion though

[melkesjokolade]

Hate mop..

[Syio]

Cataclysm.

I felt a lot of effort went into redesigning all the zones hence the devs had much less time to focus on the expansion end-game content itself. While I don't entirely blame them for its poor quality, Cataclysm remains a memory best forgotten.

[championknight]

Easily Cataclysm

- Wasted effort on doing a 80% reboot of 1-60
- Deathwing is not involved in the 1-60 apart from the joke quest and the minor dragon egg quest, both in Badlands
- Extreme end level 5-man dungeons, go away from the 'some are hard, some are easy' style from before
- 85-90 zones look and feel like seperate individual content rather than 'cataclysm' content. Contrast Pandaria, Outland and Northrend

Cata is also the first expansion to make me go away from the game due to its content

[Kaleredar]

Cataclysm. It started off great... but then they just lost it. Firelands was pretty cool, but Dragon Soul was just bad... they d didn't have enough content in the latter end of the expansion, and, what I feel the worst part is, they thoroughly wasted Deathwing as a villain.

If they had stuck to their guns with challenging heroics and taken a fundamentally different direction with Dragon Soul, it would have been much better expansion overall.

[Vargas]

Cataclysm was a misfire from the jump; the 1-60 revamp was the best part.

[Yarathir]

Cataclysm was a misfire from the jump; the 1-60 revamp was the best part.

T11 and Firelands were pretty cool, but okay.. if you say so. Rofl.

[Jokubas]

People are too negative.

Yes Cataclysm was the weakest, but that's because all the other expansions were excellent and Cata was merely pretty good.

People like to whine endlessly about DS, but it was an okay raid. Just not as epic as everyone was hoping. I really liked the first tier of Cata, and FL had its moments. And the world revamp was amazing. Worgen and Goblin ruled (in fact only downside: I wanted to see a lot more of them). Transmog and LFR were great additions.

In fact nothing in Cata was really BAD. It's just that TBC was a big step up from Vanilla, Wrath was a big step up from TBC, but Cata was effectively just continuing with the way things were in Wrath with a few minor improvements. And Wrath was a hard act to follow what with all the lore built up in WCIII.

The only thing I really disliked in Cata was trying to get into the Tol Barad BG (my server is imbalanced QQ), also it was too small and the way it worked was frustrating. Not that Wintergrasp didn't have issues.

P.S. I remember what the forums were like back in Wrath, all the votes currently going Cata used to be for Wrath lol. And now it's consistently voted the best expansion.

This is pretty much how I feel, except that I really do think Dragon Soul was epic. Having two fights against the final boss, once while you are on his back, was cinematic in a way nothing has been before or since.

Maybe Cataclysm was still the weakest overall, but I don't want to give Blizzard the wrong impression. The amount of development time relegated to updating old stuff sucked for people who don't intend to level up any other characters, but it was still really awesome, brilliant for attracting/keeping new players, and I don't want Blizzard to think that they should never fix really broken things because it takes away from the new.

[Noorri]

MoP easily is the worst for me. While it started out really strong with the questing, zones and even dailies but it really felt like a total collapse when I started getting into endgame:

5-mans where way underdeveloped, you had 3 re-makes that were nice to go through but didn't lead anywhere storywise, Temple of Jade Serpent and Stormstout Brewery were decently fit into the story but the remaining 5-mans didn't fit in anywhere in the story and felt largely irrelevant other then to farm gear so that I could start raiding. Also the fact that they haven't bothered to create any new 5-mans during the expansion is simply atrocious at this point, it's closing in on a gamebreaker for me.

The raids in MoP have simply been terrible. Nothing short of soul-crushingly bad. Horrible difficulty tuning all around, totally linear, nothing but meaningless filler bosses to make the raids as long as possible. I still don't understand why we even went to Mogu'shan Vaults, there were no reason to go there. Heart of Fear was ruined by the Klaxxi not showing up, it made the raid boring. I spent a long time doing daily quests for them and aiding them in their fight to end the corruption of the empress, and then they don't show up for the end game.... laaaame. Terrace was a tacked on raid that seems to exist only because the developers wanted more bosses. Terrace was easily the best of the raid instances in MoP though. In contrast, Throne of Thunder is the worst raid I have ever set foot in. I can understand linearity when it is in 5-mans with 3-4 bosses and in raids with 2-3 bosses, but in a 12 boss raid total linearity is so bad that words can't describe it. Insane tuning with the first boss beeing the easiest so far in the expansion and the second boss beeing harder then the 10th boss and nonsense such as that really is just inexcusable at this point in the games life.

I hate PVP so that does not factor into my decision.

The endgame lore is also terrible. Except Temple of the Jade Serpent and Stormstout Brewery, the only thing I could do in the 5-mans was shrug and think "WTF am I even doing in here". Mogu'shan Vaults, Terrace of Endless Spring and Throne of Thunder also gave me no real motivation to go there. None of them seemed threatening in lore at all. Heart of Fear was basically perfectly built up but failed catastrophically on the delivery. The Klaxxi should really have come with us in there, it would have been so much better that way. And now in 5.4 the story focuses on all the characters that they have focused WoW around that I hate.

[gannimor]

Before anyone tells me that I have that opinion because I didn't play then, know that I have been playing since 2004. I honestly believe it was Mop>Wotlk>cata>BC ( Mop being the strongest and BC the weakest ) The story just didn't feel compeling, it punished you if you wanted to play without being there since the begining. It don't have that many arguments, but BC just didn't seem to be fun to me.