Comparing expansions

[Vorkreist]

So you rather literally no content for 2 years then content you personally dont like and have only experianced 6 months of?

I'd rather have better class design , better raids, better pvp and sit 24/7 in my garrison again instead of this vomit fest called Bfa. You are stuck in a bubble that gets tinier by the day with that fanboism. Its the vast majority of people that find Bfa the worst trash in mmo history not just me "personally".

[Iseir]

I really liked Cata for its revamp and its content. I didnt raid during that expansion so i never really saw the problem with the dragonsoul raid.
WoD was an expansion that flew under the radar for me and i only discovered about 2 months before legion release, so i enjoyed the full content of that expansion quite a bit.
BFA however, has been a shitshow from the start, spesificly because the classes were simply not fun to play. Nothing about the game is fun, its either mediocre or not really engaging. I'm mainly a collector of mounts and pets, but BFA finally made me feel like I have no track of the individual mounts and pets anymore, and they are all meaningless.

so:

From worst to best of the 3:
1: BFA
2: WoD
3: .... i kinda dont want to put Cata here, as i enjoyed it more than Mist of Pandaria, and its cursed changes to the talent system

[ArenaDk]

curious why?

Woltk was a mix of reused stuff , making the game extremely casual, almost ruining the addon raid wise only ulduar and Sindragosa + Lichking foxes that. The lichking was a cartoon villain. Always appearing than going away. The lore was a mess.

Bc was just chaotic since it was the first expansions and looking back it was just a mess. Lore made no sense, attunements were just annoying , leveling was jumping between fun and boring almost every quest and people complaint how that addon kills wow still annoys me.

Mop was fine, just the other adding were better lore , pvp and leveling wise. I quit raiding in mop so I can’t tslk about that

[Nyel]

Yes 2 years with 1 actual content patch, where we are all locked in our garrison is somehow better?

It's not. But the first impression of WoD wasn't nearly as bad as BfA's.

[AbalDarkwind]

Cata is my second most disliked expansion, so that's at the bottom of these three. I enjoyed the first tier of raids, Molten Front, revamped ZG and Firelands. I also liked Hyjal and Vashj'ir. However, the dungeons were bland, revamped ZA was lazy and not fun, Uldum was a travesty, Deepholm and Twilight Highlands were boring, and most of 4.3 was a disaster, including coming with the worst raid ever in Dragon Soul.

After that would be WoD. I didn't hate WoD's content; the only things that really bugged me were the lack of endgame quests (Dailies/WQs) and the mangaling of Gorgrond and Talador's storylines. However, Draenor had some of the most beautiful zones in the game, including some of the best zone music. I have fond memories of Spires of Arak, in particular. The dungeons were decent, and the raids were fun, including one of the best raids ever with Blackrock Foundry. I even enjoyed Ashran once they reasonably balanced it.

The major reason it tanked was the lack of content. 6.1 was a bad joke of a content patch, while 6.2 being the last major content patch soured a lot of people on the whole experience, including me. If WoD had had some world endgame content beyond the Garrison tasks in 6.1, and if 6.3 had come out with Farahlon as a zone and Shattrath as a raid, WoD would have been looked at more fondly.

The jury is still out on BfA. I burned myself out getting Cutting Edge on G'huun, and work has taken me away from the game until at least 8.2. However, it does look suspiciously like Cata did for me at the same moment in time, content wise. M+ has kept dungeons relevant, although I would argue the dungeons are fairly lackluster this time around. There's world content in WQs, but the Azerite grind makes them feel like a chore. The Azerite system is one of the worst gearing systems ever implemented in the game, and the two new features, Islands and Warfronts, have both been terribly disappointing...we'll see where it ends up, but 8.2 and 8.3 will need to be serious course corrections if Blizzard doesn't want BfA to be remembered poorly.

[FelPlague]

I'd rather have better class design , better raids, better pvp and sit 24/7 in my garrison again instead of this vomit fest called Bfa. You are stuck in a bubble that gets tinier by the day with that fanboism. Its the vast majority of people that find Bfa the worst trash in mmo history not just me "personally".

better raids? lol ooook.
also vast majority? can you show me the vast majority who think BFA is worse then wod?

- - - Updated - - -

It's not. But the first impression of WoD wasn't nearly as bad as BfA's.

yeah... thats why comparing the launch of an expansion is not good.
wods launch was great, the content was fun.. for all of 3 months
just because of that does that mean the whole expansion was better? fuck no.

[korijenkins]

BFA and WoD were on another tier of bad.

Cata had bad content in the last patch, but was great up until then. Not to mention the gameplay was actually fun, PvP was actually enjoyable. Etc.

I don't know why people hate Cata so much. It had one bad patch, not 3.

[Boricha]

Cata>WoD>BFA

Cata had great class design, pvp was fun until lego daggers/vial of shadows, Firelands was cool, and hanging around Molten Front offered some good times.

WoD class design was just a worse MoP, not great but still passable. I rode out WoD on pvp since there was no content to do outside it and the raids didn't really stick with me. Also took a 6 month break at the end.

BFA has terrible class design, soul-draining progression systems and daily content, the largest amount of RNG we've seen yet. I can't find a corner of the game to enjoy like I did in WoD, so I quit it much faster.

[Highelf]

WoD was a train wreck after the first month. The story and lore didn't even make it out unscathed.

Cata is the definition of middle of the road for me. There's stuff that I REALLY liked and then stuff that I couldn't stand.

BfA is pretty boring for me so far. I like the new things they're trying to do. Drustvar was awesome. Uldir was a Sh$t show.

[Crackleslap]

Cata > landslide of '>' symbols > WoD > BFA

[Puremallace]

curious why?

It gutted the meaning of gear. Gear has pretty much been the end game and still is but WotLK started the concept of welfare epics but people over looked it because of the Lich King storyline was epic.

I agree WotLK gutted the soul out of this MMO and also started the trend of removing large RPG elements from the game in favor of making it more casual friendly.

[Wildberry]

From Worst to Least Worst:
-WoD
-BfA
-Cataclysm

Cataclysm was absolute garbage, sure, but it was a "regular expansion." WoD and BfA are on another level entirely of "badness."

Cataclysm introduced some bad features. WoD introduced most of the philosophies currently plaguing the game today (pruning/bad class design for starters). BfA is just a result of WoD-era problems hitting a peak.

Woltk was the worst thing to ever happen

Hilarious.

I'd rather have better class design , better raids, better pvp and sit 24/7 in my garrison again instead of this vomit fest called Bfa. You are stuck in a bubble that gets tinier by the day with that fanboism. Its the vast majority of people that find Bfa the worst trash in mmo history not just me "personally".

WoD class design was absolute garbage though. Like, the entire reason BfA class design is absolute garbage is due to philosophies that started in WoD.

Woltk was a mix of reused stuff

Literally Naxx and that's about it, but okay whatever. Let's completely ignore the massive amount of new art assets we saw.

making the game extremely casual,

Why? Because of "Easy dungeons, and muh naxx faceroll"? Dungeon difficulty in WotLK was fine. Naxx itself was screwed due to much of the difficulty of the first version not translating well two expansions later for reduced group sized. Aside from Naxx though, let's look at the other raids:

Sarth 3d wasn't casual. Ulduar wasn't casual at all. Yogg+0 and Algalon presented massive challenges for great players. HLK25 is still the best fight they've put out to this day.

WotLK had plenty of "hard" content. The Wrath casualfest thing is the biggest meme in the world.

The lichking was a cartoon villain. Always appearing than going away.

Largely overstated. The Lich King was handled far better than Illidan, Deathwing, Archimonde or Argus were.

The lore was a mess.

Did you somehow miss "World of Warcraft: Time Travelling Orcs?"

WoD class design was just a worse MoP, not great but still passable. I rode out WoD on pvp since there was no content to do outside it and the raids didn't really stick with me. Also took a 6 month break at the end.

This is revisionist nonsense. WoD class design is nothing like MoP class design. Just ask Warlocks, Warriors, etc. about how thoroughly their classes were gutted.

- - - Updated - - -

It gutted the meaning of gear. Gear has pretty much been the end game and still is but WotLK started the concept of welfare epics but people over looked it because of the Lich King storyline was epic.

Apparently you didn't play Vanilla then, because everyone who did was either complaining, or heard complaining about "Welfare Epics" when it came to BC Badge gear.

[Ungeir]

(from best to worst)

1. Cataclysm.

The pre-nerf Heroics was some of the best dungeon they've ever done. It was insanely annoying that they caved in and made them faceroll so early in the expansion. The storyline was mostly bad and horrible, but the dungeons and zones were pretty good imo. The world rework was great and terrible at the same time. The new graphics were good, the flow of the new zones much, much better, and the quests had decent variety. But the zone stories being so tightly tied to Deathwing was a big mistake as it made them age poorly.

2. Warlords of Draenor

They explored many new concepts, but failed to deliver relevant content and progression outside of raiding after release. I didn't find Garrison that bad - it was far from perfect, but if there had been proper non-raid content, it would have been fine. The whole "Ray D. Tear" mess was pretty disheartening as it was essentially Blizzard admitting they didn't have the bandwidth to create enough content for an expansion. The story was dumb and weird, but they tried something bold and failed. I can respect that.

3. Battle for Azeroth

I hate the expansion concept. The current incarnation of the faction war is dumb. Terrible overall story that feels like fanfiction - I don't expect much from game lore and story - but considering there's an actual story and narrative team this is just embarrassing. They also managed to wreck fan favorites like Sylvanas, Nathanos, Saurfang, Baine and Anduin - by making them annoying, stupid and/or giving them weird story arcs.

Lack of endgame content and progression. Insanely bad dungeons due to way too much trash among other things. Half-baked systems being released. Bugs galore. Class mechanics being left to rot.

Legion felt like they were starting to give WoW the attention and resources it needed. BfA felt like Blizzard trying to get by with the minimum viable effort.

[eduwneso]

No it doesn't. I think its a rotten garbage light years away from Wod which was previously the worst expansion. When the core systems design drive away most players it doesn't matter what new sylvanus fanfic they release in 8.4 or 8.5

Fixed it for ya

[Freshouttajail]

If you had to rate Cata,WoD,BFA which one would be the most disliked by you?

For me it is Wod<BFA<Cata
I liked quite a lot Cata.It gave me 2 pasanger drake.
WoD was really disapointing.
I enjoy BFA's story and M+ but that is it.

edit: As FelPlague pointed i will change it.

WoD easily the worst.
BfA is a mix of some fucking terrible design but also the best art and music.
Cata I enjoyed quite a lot, as a game dev I can easily see the effort that was put in this xpack, everyone saying Cata sucked is just an ignorant person, and I'm not saying this as an insult, it's perfectly normal to be ignorant about things like that. Playing games doesn't mean you know how it's made or even what's good. All you have is your opinion, which to be fair, doesn't mean anything when we're talking about objective quality.

[huth]

I'd say WoD was the worst. There was next to no content and content cut repeatedly. They also had the system in place which was essentially "instance yourself in your garrison and click on this table."

Honestly, for me it is at the top of the "worst expansion" list simply for the moronically stupid move of putting every player in a personal instance that you have to go into for important gameplay features, thereby ensuring that the instance server is going to be hopelessly overcrowded.

[The Stormbringer]

WoD=Cata>BfA

I enjoyed BfA less than WoD or Cata, but I haven't exactly played it a lot, so take that with a grain of salt. Part of it might be burn-out, part of it might be the fact that it just felt like Legion Lite to me, or the direction of the story, but I've just not enjoyed it much.

[Beerbill Society]

Good: WoD
Bad: Cataclysm
Ugly: BFA

I really hated Cata, even though I played it, I didn't like leveling most zones were painful and I sometimes forced me to endure it. I have some good memories from it but still it's bad overall.

WoD BS Blizzcon presentation made me quit for a year (first time I took a long break from WoW) and refund all WoD I pre purchased, I rejoiced because I was right to do so, Garrison were like Cake, a lie, and the launch was the worst thing fucking ever.

After a year I came back, started my Garrison (knowing that it was a crappy attempt of housing) and with the lowest of expectations and had a great time, the expasion was a fucking nightmare and I played so hard casual that I didn't even set foot in raiding or anything useful for that matter but still felt somewhat of enjoyment leveling alts and RPing in my own castle.

BFA is so sad that I don't even want to try it anymore, leveling was so terrible and dull, the history is hard to watch and harder to swallow, that I just gave up all together of 15 years of WoW.

[crono14]

1) WoD
2) Cata
3) BFA

[Crillam]

Cata was pretty good until dragon soul. People judge it harshly based on the memory of that raid. Both WoD and cata were better than BFA.

Oh yeah Cata was really good, except DS and that after a while nostalgia hit and you would miss the old world with instances (even if cata made the questing experience a lot smoother etc nostalgia is one hell of a drug)