Which is expansion is the best in your mind not including Vanilla?

[Dilbon]

The beginning of WotLK before gearscore nonsense.

[Alex86el]

imo:

TBC > Vanilla > Cata = MoP > WoD = WotLK > Legion = BFA

[Flurryfang]

He did say "not including vanilla" just so people would make the distinction. I, too, loved Legion and would rank it closer to the top than the bottom. I'd go TBC > WOTLK > Legion > MoP > who cares

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Agreed. Wrath did some great things, but it also did things like Trials raid.

TBC was the pinnacle of wow for me. The gear ladder was never better as far as beating A to get to B, B to C, etc. Sure, attunements sucked but the actual progression ladder was perfection

.....I actually liked Trials raid alot xD But i get what you are going at, they changed things up alot for that expansion instead of building on top of the original which they did in TBC.

[Boricha]

It's hard to say. Favorite pvp was Wrath. Favorite raiding and zones was MoP, pvp also not bad in the second half, but mop brought crap like titanforging and CRZ. TBC was a great middle ground for everything and super immersive, but it was also when I started.

[justandulas]

.....I actually liked Trials raid alot xD But i get what you are going at, they changed things up alot for that expansion instead of building on top of the original which they did in TBC.

I can't believe i'm saying this, but i actually liked the trials daily area looking back on it.

[Waynhim]

TBC by far.

[Grevmak]

TBC>=Wotlk>MoP>=Legion>Cata>WoD>BFA

TBC was awesome thanks to leveling, raids and heroic 5 mans being difficult in a fun and challenging way, classes getting interesting and fun upgrades while still being Classes and not just "What color of combopoint would you like, sir?" - on top of that, professions were actually decent, repgrinding was rewarding since you got decent rewards and the whole game felt a lot like a Vanilla+. Didn't like Flying mounts in hindsight though, and attunement should be accountwide to be honest.

Wotlk would be higher than TBC if the heroics and Raids wouldn't have been so darned easy for a good bunch of its lifetime. The whole of T7 is a joke except for OS3D 10 man, no attunements whatsoever is a tad sad IMO - small ones would be enough, a bit of entry-lore is fun IMO (Needn't be as excessive as TBC, something akin to MC attunement's enough) and badge gear and LFG blow. Classes were really fun here though, but lost a bit of what made em unique. RIP Windfury totem and CCing in Dungeons. Ulduar's like, the best raid ever though, so it's darned close.

BFA is the worst because it's the direct opposite of what made TBC and Wotlk great. Classes all feel very similar to one another, finding a challenge takes forever since the only challenging content is Heroic Raiding or higher M+ keys so until then you have to chew through tons of mindnumbingly simple content. Titanforging blows, there's so many ways of getting random gear that there's 0 identity to any of it, tons of collectibles make them less about status symbols and more about just collecting a ton of them, which is kinda fun but also takes away the MMORPG envy that I kinda enjoyed in Classic and TBC.

The other expansions all have their merits. WoD just needed more content, what was there was pretty great. Cata also needed more stuff, CMs would've helped - DS was by far the worst raid ever released into WoW.

Legion was fun, had tons of content but I'm still not a fan of modern WoW's designprinciples as a whole, see BFA point.
MoP was also really fun except for the initial grind, CMs were awesome and not at all necessary, ToT is like the 2nd best Raid in all of WoW IMO and the classes were crazy complex. Ever played Enhance here? Tons of fun.

Just my 5cts.

[roboscorcher]

Legion. i've been playing from classic, but this one was the most time consuming with pleasure among them.

Agreed! Legion had it all: story, cool weapons and gear, good raids, unique pre-launch event. Every patch was super-hype, with only ToS being mediocre.

My top 3:

Legion
Wrath (I started playing here)
MoP

[Nnyco]

Legion and MoP, these two were just truely amazin.

[Queen of Hamsters]

MoP and Legion.

[Lurker1]

BFA so far is the best for me this is based on the 8.2 patch i been playing on the ptr ftw haveing a hard time going back to live lol sigh....

[Shadowsgrace]

edit: just for my overall rankings here (including Classic):
BC > Wrath > Classic > MoP > Legion > Cataclysm > BfA > WoD

I agree with this except for two things, I kinda liked TBC's Story and a small tweak to the ranking, leaving Classic out as they said "except vanilla".

TBC > Wrath > MoP = Legion > Cata > BfA > WoD.

The only thing WoD was good for was Challenge Mode weapons, and the Gold made from Garrisons.

[Daevied]

Wrath was the best expansion (mostly because of the Lich King storyline and how all the content actually focused on and related to that) but if you had started a poll I would have voted for TBC rather than Wrath because Wrath was also the expansion that was the beginning of the end of WoW with the introduction of LFR, CRZ and mindless AoE fest dungeons. All of which are at the heart of what's wrong with retail, for me at least, today.

Wrath was both the best and worst expansion.

LFR and CRZ on wrath? wtf?

[Deferionus]

Every expansion has its strengths when you look at it objectively.

TBC had solid class design, heroics 5 mans were awesome, solid raids, arenas were added to the game making PvP a refreshed experience. It was an all around improvement on what vanilla was.

Wrath had a strong story, a well defined villain that was iconic in the video game industry, ulduar and ICC were fantastic raids. PvP balance was poor a fair bit of the expansion until season 7 and 8 and 5 man content was poor as well. Naxx was under tuned as a raid tier. Malygos and Sarth 3d were solid encounters. Critics were unhappy with the amount of vehicle content they used this expansion. This expansion you could run raids multiple times per week on different settings that was removed in Cata.

Cataclysm had strong additions in rated battlegrounds and guilds. I think this was the best PvP expansion as a whole with strong class design. Had an iconic end villain and solid story to go with it. Initial 5 man content was good and had good raid content from what I did (I stopped playing late in Cataclysm due to friends leaving). Criticism that is warranted is that they spent a lot of effort into revamping the 1-60 experience, and admittedly this likely dampened the expansion. I was a hardcore PvPer at this time so I had plenty to do but the more casual or PvE players did not seem to. I honestly think this is an underappreciated expansion.

Mists to me never felt like Warcraft. I leveled up and while it was a good leveling experience it felt out of place. I quit playing shortly after the leveling experience and did not return until late in the expansion shortly before WoD's release. Playing content after the fact it seems there was a lot to do. The pet battle system is one of my favorite additions they have done, though I don't participate much. I just think small systems like that is great for the game world feeling alive and also great for the game economy. SOO, heart of fear, throne of thunder look like they were great raids.

Warlords of Draenor is I think agreeably the worst expansion. Good leveling experience. I liked Garrisons and the idea behind them. The expansion had a good idea, time travel aside. Time travel is almost always done poorly - I think caverns of time is the sole exception I can think of. The PvP world zone was good with lots of content. Ultimately, this expansion suffered from cut development. They never added the major cities. They had an entire patch dedicated to just adding interface changes. This expansion could have been good if Blizzard had doubled down and made something of it, instead they decided to just focus on the future.

And in Legion it paid off. Mythic+ was a good addition. The falcosaur pets were my personal favorite addition of the expansion - I really liked the PvP quests to get revenge. World quests were much better than daily quests. The expansion had strong raids with well defined end game bosses. Suramar and the Nighthold was amazing. Personally I think Argus was done poorly and I think it should have been its own expansion. It was a down grade from Broken Shore. Class order halls were amazing and seemed like a spiritual continuation of Garrisons to a degree. The class flavor was amazing. Overall Blizzard did some of its best work with this expansion. Hell, mage tower added some fun solo experiences for everyone. What made Legion fantastic was all the stuff you could do alone when not playing with others - individual progress in a living world.

And now we are in BFA. BFA is Legion jr that will never quite do what its father did. The alliance war quests pale in comparison to the order halls. So far there has not been anything similar to the falcosaurs that I care about. I really liked Drustvar for leveling but the other zones weren't quite as memorable (I haven't leveled on horde side). I wouldn't say they were bad. The raids are good this expansion. Mythic+ continues to be a good addition. Island Expeditions are an alright addition to the game for a niche player base. The war zones add some cool stuff but they aren't anything you really look forward to doing more than a few times. The outdoor zone farming is better than the battles themselves. The heart of Azeroth, quite frankly, blows. I know they are trying to improve it but I don't find myself caring about it and just look forward to it being gone. The artifacts were fantastic in Legion and I don't see the heart of azeroth ever comparing to them. The worst part is when I played BFA in the beta and leveled to 120 I found myself not wanting Legion to end. I wish Legion had a few more content patches. Almost a year later I still feel the same way.

Anyway: Legion > Wrath > BC > Cataclysm > MoP > BFA > WoD as of right now

[Lochton]

My top 3 is all on the same rating,

Wrath of the Lich King = Mists of Pandaria = Legion

[Deferionus]

LFR and CRZ on wrath? wtf?

LFR was added in Cataclysm for the Deathwing raid (name escapes me right now) and CRZ was added in WoD or MoP. WOTLK had phasing that progressed the way areas looked based on your quests completed and other players may be in different phases than you depending on their progress... but not CRZ.

[xuros]

TBC followed by WotLK and MoP.

[McNeil]

My rankings:

[pewpmeiser]

they are all S ranking in my book

[Radon]

Cataclysm; it improved a lot of systems from WoTLK, including Class play styles and even tho the ending was bad with Lore, LFR and Dragon Soul itself, it was still my favorite one.
MoP would probably take the cake, if it wasn't for that horrendous Talent Tree that still hasn't changed for some reason.