Your favourite expansion, story-wise

[Garymorilix]

Vanilla: Vanilla didn't have an over-arching story, so there's that. Zone based stories were lacking aswell, there might have been some flavor here and there, but most of the quests involved doing random stuff for the sake of exploration. Not much to judge here.

BC: Just a pure mess. They forced in so many WC3 characters with questionable motives that the whole "plot" didn't make much sense. Again, there was a lack of over-arching story, and zone-wide stories didn't make more sense either. I'd say this was even worse than Vanilla.

WotLK: Very good premise that was delivered upon. However, I feel the narrative stumbled in the middle with the Ulduar and Trial Tournament stuff. It had a very promising start with all the zones heavily featuring the LK with Naxx returning, but story-wise we went doing semi-random tasks after that only to walk into Icecrown to kill the bastard. The setting was perfect tho.

Cata: Cata was the first expansion with good over-arching storytelling. By good I mean that things actually followed each other in a logical pattern (more or less) to form a coherent narrative. Now that narrative might not has been the best, but I enjoyed it.
Also with cata you have to mention the revamped old-world. The new 1-60 leveling zones are mostly perfect. They manage to both follow-up on vanilla stories and expand with the cata setting. 5/5 there, just don't mention Winterspring.

MoP: The overall story was good as far as presentation goes, but the choices they made were complete 180 turns, especially regarding Garrosh. Garrosh was established so good in Cataclysm, and then immediately butchered in MoP. It's a shame. The middle part of the expansion were also a mess with the Thunder King, he had no presence, just showed up to die basically.

WoD: Holy god. Multi-dimensional time travel. Why did WoW introduce something like that. I mean I know, the Warcraft movie and all but damn. They could've done literally ANYTHING in this expansion to make it coherent, as the setting didn't force them to stick to any established lore, yet they managed to competely abandon it. Not even do it badly, but abandon it. The intro scenario is the best thing in this expac. Each warlord gets a title card and boom. Some show up somewhere doing something then they're dead and we're back on Azeroth. At least it didn't have any major effect on our main universe.

Legion: Goddamnit it did. Goddamnit Gul'dan. Now, apart from the whole time-travel Gul'dan stuff, it was alright. The Legion went pretty passive after our defeat at the broken shore, at least we had time to deal with the Nightmare and Suramar. The story really picked up after that which was fine. Most of the lore stuff were hidden in order-halls which were just fan-service. They closed some long-forgotten plot-lines/holes so they don't have to deal with them later. Some were fun. But someone could tell us what really went down with Neptulon in Cata - Legion period.

BfA: The story is more coherent so-far and the previous two expansions. It might not be "good" for some, but it's more connected. And I tend to value that more when it comes to storytelling. The Zandalari isles are one big story, it's a joy to play through. Kul Tiras is more drawn out and I feel it has more focus on Jaina than Kul Tiras, which is meh, the fleet could've gotten Jaina's death realm part of the story imo. Overall it's not the worst.

Ranking:
WotLK
Cata
Legion
BfA
MoP
WoD
Vanilla
BC

[Alex86el]

Best: WotLK. Killing undead, f*k yeah. Plus the stories of Arthas, Bolvar and Saurfang)

Worst: The whole of WoD timetravel lazy crap. And also Legion because Varian and Vol'jin died.

[Velshin]

Best: WotLK. Killing undead, f*k yeah. Plus the stories of Arthas, Bolvar and Saurfang)

Worst: The whole of WoD timetravel lazy crap. And also Legion because Varian and Vol'jin died.

WoD story maybe bad and lazy but at least it is there. TBC story is all over the place and very unconsistence.

[Ferg]

I'm torn between WotLK and Legion.

WotLK was the end of the original chapter of Warcraft, the story of Arthas and his downfall. I know things happened before that, but the Lich King story really was the major driving force behind much of what the Horde and Alliance did before that, even if it wasn't shown ingame. It wrapped up his story in an excellent way, especially at the very end when he asks his father, "Is it...over?" showing that there was actually a small sliver of humanity left in the monster he had become. The follow up reveal with Bolvar was incredible, too.

Legion was, though, in my opinion, the most "epic" storyline of all of Warcraft. Our characters had grown in power and prestige enough to be called the LEADERS of our class, not just random mercenaries who took orders from everyone else. We commanded legends in their own rights, characters who were very established in Warcraft lore, and it made you feel as if your actions actually did cause everyone else on the planet to recognize that you were the best chance of victory and survival. Also, the Illidan redemption arc and the final showdown with Argus / Illidan fulfilling his destiny as Sargeras' jailer.

The first time I watched the final Legion cinematic and saw Illidan, glaives out, facing down almost certain death with a smile on his face and him saying "Finally...", I actually teared up a little bit. He was done SO wrong in TBC when we should have been helping him all along. Illidan, in my opinion, is probably the "main" character of WoW if you don't count the player character. His story was done so well, and ended so perfectly, that there isn't any way I can choose WotLK over Legion or vice versa.

[Stuntzx]

vanilla / wotlk

[Th3Scourge]

How do people think Vanilla had no story? It possibly had the best story. Each (finished) zone had it's own story, each raid had its own story. There was so much rich lore in zones and didn't need this character-driven narrative nonsense we have now.

I personally loved the lore with the forsaken in tirisfal, the war against the scarlet crusade, the plaguelands and the Scourge influence in the regions. Also the lore around the dark iron dwarf clan and Blackrock Mountain was great too.

The story was there, you just had to go find it. Shits on current story telling where it's shoved in your face. I guess this started in WotLK where Arthas had to show up every 2 mins and remind you who he was. The titan lore was much better delivered

[Ferg]

How do people think Vanilla had no story? It possibly had the best story. Each (finished) zone had it's own story, each raid had its own story. There was so much rich lore in zones and didn't need this character-driven narrative nonsense we have now.

Every zone or raid has a story. Every. Single. One. In fact, I challenge you to name one that doesn't! The story in vanilla WoW was not good, at all. Period.

[Ielenia]

It was a really hard choice between Wrath of the Lich King and Mists of Pandaria. I liked the story in both... but in the end Wrath won, for me, because I do like the Lich King more than Chen Stormstout, and I liked how the bad guy would randomly show up around the world while you leveled up.

[Soon-TM]

But I actually liked Vanilla the most. I think the way the story is told is the best for an MMO. There's a vague lore in the background. But you're a simple adventurer. There's always mystery beyond the hill, a dark tower in the distance. Not everything is explained and it's not a narrow story.

Agreed. The Vanilla/BC style of storytelling, simple as it was, it did have its charm. Surprisingly, Vanilla did it in a much better fashion than BC, which also had the big flaw of sending important characters to the gallows just because it might look cool at the time.

[Kyphael]

Wrath will win. Lich King is the face of WoW. Surprised MoP got so many votes though, it was good, I just preferred Wrath.

[Th3Scourge]

Every zone or raid has a story. Every. Single. One. In fact, I challenge you to name one that doesn't! The story in vanilla WoW was not good, at all. Period.

It's more to do with the storytelling. And the storytelling was 1000x better in vanilla wow than now.

The story in vanilla WoW was great, period.

[Domcho]

The Frozen Throne

[Itisamuh]

Legion, by far. I understand people liking classic and old expansions more for various reasons, but the notion that they did storytelling better is laughable. The last few expansions were without a doubt major improvements over the first few, in terms of storytelling quality. Not to say the plot itself was better, but the way it gets presented in game has improved quite a lot over the years for the most part.