Which Expansion Told the Best Story?

[Matthias]

Very curious as to what people opinions are. I don't think Warcraft has the best storytelling period, but they're good at making awesome cutscenes for shockvalue or sheer awesomeness. They're even more limited in the scope of an expansion as they have deadlines to meet thus content gets cut and they adjust the story around it. Many expansion story lines start off strong but tend to end on a whimper because of this.

For me it's a contest between WoTLK and MoP so here me out and I'd like to hear other opinions.

Vanilla

Adding this for those who believe a good story in an MMORPG is no overraching story, sure things are going on, but tackling threats is day to day for an an adventurer. Nostolgia for Vanilla is kind of what makes me more open to expansions like MoP and BFA where the theme isn't some super threat trying to kill you throughout the entire expansions life cylce.

The Burning Crusade

More like the Burning Expedition....I love TBC but the story is a mess and before Blizz was even trying to tell a narrative. We arrive in Hellfire where the threat is clear, giant pitlords, fel orcs, Hellfire Citadel, etc. Then we end up in Zangermarsh....and some chick is stealing water. There isn't a strong Legion or Illidari presence until you get to Netherstorm and Shadowmoon. Hell there wasn't even a solid explanation as to why we killed Illidan and the threat of the Legion isn't felt until the Sunwell patch. So TBC feels more like an expedition (that I enjoyed) where you learn more about this broken world.

Wrath of the Lich King

Clear front runner, closing up the story of the fallen prince Arthas, deviating to Ulduar and ending in Icecrown. We're introduced to plenty of new heroes such as Garrosh and Varian building up drama between the two factions. The Argent Tournament does feels out of place, would have rathered the Spider Kingdom or a Gundrak raid. And while we never saw Illidian out side of Black Temple in TBC, Arthas popping up every hour like a Saturday morning cartoon villian shaking his fist at you is kind of comical in hindsight. Malygos jumping off the deep end also makes no sense, I can understand he doesn't want mortals reckless using magic, but going to war with the Kirin Tor when the Scourge is clearly a bigger threat?

Cataclysm

Cata was a mess. After taking down the Lich King the biggest villian we've vanquished an even bigger moar massive villian pops up out of the earth breaking it. Great for promotional art, but as far as story goes? Deathwings personality leaves so much to be desired, he's just a crazy dragon, and how he amassed such a force of followers so quickly and randomly is also confusing unless you dig into lore. It's a weird amalgamation of Elementals, Dragons, Twilight Cultist and Naga, all tied together by the Old Gods. Both Nefarian and Onyxia were far more interesting, Nef plotting non stop in his lair, with Onyxia working behind the scenes politically. Then we have Thrall....assigning Garrosh as Warchief (cause what could go wrong?), Green Jesus and the Dragon Aspects losing their power seemed unnecessary.

Mist of Pandaria

I feel like MoP deserves more points for originality and gets a bad wrap for it's panda theme. Though not the most epic I feel like the pacing of the story up to it's conclusion just works. Starting off when the conflict between the Horde and Alliance escalating, a quick respite to deal with the Thunder King, to finally the the two factions uniting to stop Garrosh where we canonically raid a capital city for the first time. Bringing along with it many interesting factions such as the Shado-Pan, Klaxxi Paragons, the Sha and the Celestial Guardians. As always though there are some character developments and choices that were just silly. I mean Varian should have really just let Thrall smash Garrosh's head in (Varian would still be alive then). Take him to trial? The guy is guilty ffs, you wanted to send him to the Phantom Zone or something?

Garrosh going full meglomaniacal in such a way just contradicts his character development from Cataclysm. Rhonin dies in a lame way. And I've always been bothered by Jaina's transformation and views against the Horde, while understandable. Once again an expansion where there isn't an ever present super threat that's going to kill us all is refreshing, and MoP shows that Blizzard can tell new stories that aren't directly tied to WC3.

Warlords of Draenor

Loses points for time travel/multi-verse theory off the jump. While the idea of picking off each Warlord one by one could have been great, it was poorly executed even at the start. Kargath dies as the first boss in the first raid, Ner'zhul is a 5 man boss, he's the original Lich King so much more could have been done with him. Gul'dan, Chogall and Teron were interesting. I adored Ga'nar (Garrosh minus the stupid). But this one ends on a whimper Grom is no longer bad and we ban together to stop Archimonde and Gul'dan. Grom isn't held accountable at all. I can barely touch on the lore here because I barely left my garrison.

Legion

This expanions starts off better than all of the expansions in my opinion. The invasion of the Tomb of Sargeras, death of heroes Varian, Vol'jin, Tirian. Seeing just about every major demon you've ever killed come back to life on that beach makes you want to crap your pants.
Then we have Surumar and the conflict with Xavius resulting in Ysera's death. Azshara re-appears. All of the first half cultimating in the death of Gul'dan a top the Nighthold (similar setting to the Lich King ontop of Icecrown) and it feels like such sweet vengeance for the death of your faction leader.

After that though....I mean we finally get to see Kil'jaeden, but not nearly enough. As far as we all knew this was the effective leader of Burning Legion and we barely get to know him. Less in game developement than Gul'dan...whose from another timeline. I also found the Argus and Antorius plot lines hard to follow being so "alien".

The ending cutscene Sargeras pops out in all his glory from a cloud and I'm thinking..."where the hell did he come from? And where has he been? I thought he was stuck in the nether?" Then Illidan becoming his jailer? How exactly? Sargeras is too powerful to even be a raid boss, and Illidan couldn't even 1v1 Kil'jaeden. Illidian's development was odd to me also, many of us wanted a redemption story, but that's because Illidan wasn't supposed to be evil thus killed in TBC. But everyones favorite demon hunter went from being a self absorbed anti-hero that does the right things for the wrong reasons to someone that is now benevolent enough to spend all of enternity watching Sargeras sit in a chair?

Battle for Azeroth

So much potential lost here. The narrative of the Alliance and Horde at full war (and no pandas) sounded great. Saurfang's honor vs Sylvanas's ambition was fun to watch. The problem all lies with Sylvana's and her followers motivations. I remember the fan theories of what set this war off, my favorite being the death of Vereesa Windrunner. If Sylvana's kills her own sister it had to be for something major, or perhaps Vereesa's death indirectly by the Alliance's hands triggers Sylvana's to set Darnassus ablaze, but no Sylvanas is pretty much just being a bitch. And we've seen this story before with Garrosh, yet somehow so many Horde leaders just line up behind her. It's so clear that Lor'themar was wary of her in MoP, yet he just falls in line? The Forsaken were always outcast of the Horde, never trusted. Sylvanas being promoted to Warchief during the Legion invasion could be rationalized by her experience and being the longest reigning faction leader. Invasion is over, time to remember this chick was always quesitonable. I was interested to know what she was up to in Legion, but the Shadowlands set up could have been done without her starting a genocidal war.

I found Azshara charming and glad we truly got to know her, but I feel she arrived waay to late. Cataclysm through Legion was her time. It's amazing how smug she is despite Kil'jaden, Archimonde, Sargeras, Arthas and Deathwing being defeated, girl you aint that special. N'zoth can at least attack our minds, but recent Old Gods to lackeys. Aman'thul literally plucked out Y'shaarj.

[Kyphael]

Wrath of the Lich King. It was the most linear and cohesive story, even if predictable and formulaic, it wasn't trying to re-invent the wheel and didn't try to be too ambitious and become convoluted under the weight of that ambition. Good sub-plots too between Yogg-saron and Malygos declaring war on all mages of Azeroth.

[Whitedragon]

WotLK or MoP for me, both managed to maintain a high level of story investment from me. (Voted WotLK)

[HordeFanboy]

wotlk
/10 chars

[Varodoc]

Easily Mists and Legion. Garrosh is a better villain than Sylvanas, and in Legion the Argus storyline alone is better than anything BfA has produced.

[Mirishka]

For me MoP/Wrath tie for best, followed by Legion.

Cata was 'meh' for me aside from the Molten Front/Firelands stuff, BC suffered from just about all the storytelling shortcomings vanilla had, and WoD started out strong (like, really strong) but ended with 'DRAENOR IS FREEEEEEE!'

Need I say more?

BFA had moments of brilliance but too many story threads feel unfinished/unsatisfying. Like... we saved Azeroth, and yet that's only confirmed via an offhanded comment during our relentless grind for essences/neck power.

Shouldn't that have been, I dunno, kind of a big moment? "Ye did it champion, you have the essence! Oh and yeah something Azeroth is okay now something."

[Super Dickmann]

Wrath was perfectly functional and while the over-emphasis on Tirion and the Argents was obnoxious and the Tournament was nonsense it was fine. Mists is the best executed on a purely technical and storytelling level but unlike Wrath what it's trying to produce is bad.

[Devilyaki]

I’ll have to go with MoP, close with wolk. Just from the opening cinematic to the end quest they tied together nicely with the “why do you fight”

[Xaviaton]

I'll go with WotLK for it's smooth running from "Arriving at new continent problems" to "Solving problems within our own factions" to "Confronting the villain we set out to confront". Honestly, Ulduar feels more out of place to me than the Argent Tournament but Ulduar was absolutely amazing as a standalone patch and connected to Storm Peaks quests so I'm never gonna complain about its inclusion.

However, I want to give a huge shout out to Cataclysm as I feel you left out the true gold of the expansion which was the new 1-60 experience and the standalone episodes. If Ulduar was an amazing, though out of place, story-arch to me in WotLK, then most of Cataclysm was just a series of amazing out of place story-archs. Westfall, Southern Barrens, Ashenvale -> Stonetalon Mountains, and Vashj'ir (Story, not gameplay) were fantastic stories that provided excellent continuations of previous stories. While the meme quests in Uldum, Badlands, and others aren't my favourites in terms of replayability I certainly appreciated them the first time around. I feel like Blizzard doubled down on positive critique from WotLK quests (Borean Tundra and Grizzly Hills cloak and dagger quests + Harrison Jones comedy quests) for better or worse and it mostly worked out.

That being said I completely agree that the Deathwing/Twilight Hammer/Elemental endgame questing was a mess, which is why I left the game this expansion and didn't return until the end of MoP (which I now feel I missed out on but cannot judge because of that).

[Feanoro]

Time to break out my post on why Wrath was a clusterfuck, because nostalgia goggles are clearly on. Wrath, way more so than TBC (aka "Metzen tries LSD"), tried to paint huge, "epic" storylines and ended up crashing them all with no survivors. Cata onwards accelerated the search for new lows, but Wrath got the ball rolling.

----------
Wrath was a mess.
- The blue dragon "war", which was a few quests in Borean Tundra, dropped completely until "oh go kill an Aspect, k?"

- Borean Tundra also introduced one side of the Yogg story with the Curse of Flesh.

- Main story, part 1 in Howling Fjord. Shhh, Arthas who is the Lich King who is not Arthas but is must not know a landing force is here (even though in BT, there's an undead welcoming party) and especially must not know that Tirion Faildring is here with Ash- "DAMN YOU ARTHAS YOU KILLED A RED SHIRT I AM HERE WITH ASHBRINGER TO PUNISH YOU!" Dammit, Tirion.

- OK, no Scourge zerging us after Faildring screwed up his own plan, let's head inwards. Hmm, some small territorial bits, killing animals and pockets of Scourge who show no signs of attacking us, that's a bit odd. Wow, stone vs metal dwarves leading again towards Yogg, we might have to find out what this is about!

- Welcome to Canada, er Grizzly Hills! Boy we hope you travel the correct way or you totally spoil our werewolf surprise... Damn. Um, we have some really great music here! Go help those furbolgs with their corrupted dead tree with more Yogg hints. What are those big stone stairs?

- Hey mon, welcome to da troll zone! We be havin' animal gods... wait, come back! It be different! This time, we be killing them because dat make sense! Oh and you gonna help the bad guy kill da resistance to da Scourge, because Metzen be lovin' PCs helping de bad guy! No one EVER spot dat a mile off! Also, the Argent WhateverWeAreThisWeek need help. Collect magical undead bear asses for this not suspicious at all alchemist working for us.

- Meanwhile, having finished BT, we arrive in Dragonblight where everyone is shocked, SHOCKED to learn that a mage has gone lich and is hanging out in the town cemetery instead of holding tea parties in sunny meadows. Wander in one direction and help relive Arthas burning the mercenary ships so you don't forget this expansion is about him. If only someone would remind the writers. Oh hey, dragon shrines! They're under attack by the Scourge, fortunately the Aspects are all nearby! Sorry, they're too busy looking hot and half naked. Do go deal with it, will you? Ok, so dragons are lazy as hell and don't care about their shrines.

Let's head north... Oh shit, Naxxramas! All right, let's... kill a few undead right under a powerful necromancer who can easily rez them right after we leave because we still haven't learned to burn bodies.

Onward to the Wrath gate and the beginning of more pointless faction drama! We raid the Undercity to learn that a demon was sneaky! Who knew? Also the beginning of endless excuses for Thrall and Sylvanas about the plague. Varian, in his first real role other than posing for statues everywhere, reacts with logic that an absolute dictator warchief who didn't know about the plague is either complicit or incompetent. Shit, Metzen says we can't make Thrall look bad or we're fired. Um, Sylvanas... sorry, we just heard from community relations how everyone thinks she's hawt. Um, she in no way heard what was going on in the next room! Wait, she's still subject to the "complicit or incompetent" logic. Dammit. Shit, Varian is bringing up all the other fucked up stuff the Horde does and saying he's had enough! Um... Jaina betrays her people again and ports everyone out of there. She has no idea why everyone thinks she's banging Thrall. Wow, this is a major development, surely we'll... totally drop it and move onto something else.

- OK well, our Borean Tundra and Howling Fjord paths have met up in Crystalsong Forest. Wow, it's sure pretty here, I can't wait to see the story here! Hello? Anyone? Hello, is anyone there? Dammit, Lagaran. Let's move on to the best zone in the expansion.

- Behold, Storm Peaks. Imposing. Intimidating. Majestic. And home to a really emo Titan Watcher and his really emo frost giant buddies. Help them kiss and make up. Learn the tragic tale of betrayal by Loken (hey do you think they've figured out we're using Norse myth and all but screaming who the bad guy is?) and how Tyr… Wait, where did our notes on him go? Eh, screw it the players won't notice. If they do, we'll BS something. Say, don't we have a zone called Tirisfal and always teased about something under it? Great, we'll pretend it was planned out! They'll buy it, after all we got away with forgetting Eredar corrupting Sargy in TBC. Now back to business.

With mighty Thorim at our side, we make our way to the fantastic Titan city of Ulduar, one of the greatest raids and the last gasp of the original design team. At last, Loken will face justice! Cue the tentacle rape for Thorim and mustache twirling gloating at the PC. This will not stand! Ooh, shiny giant Dwarf statue over there! Hey, a big crack in the cliffs leading to Icecrown. We will now pause while you the reader get the big crack jokes out of your system, you pervert.

- Oh right, Icecrown! Lich King! The reason we came here in the first place, right right. Wait, didn't we skip a zone? Eh, Arthas will keep, he's been very gracious about us stomping around Northrend so far. Quite the gentleman, as personifications of undeath go. Let's take a plane ride and make fun of engineers at the same time. Anyway, what awaits us here in the fight against the Sco… time to hunt animals, build a flight path, and enjoy the relaxing music and scenery! What? OK, fine, we'll get back to the main point of this expansion. Freya, a Titan Watcher who failed to watch, is now bitchy with the PC as she zaps skeletons. We weren't the ones who let them bomb the pillar entrusted at the beginning of the world, but ok we'll fix it. As a bonus, we'll go check the other pillars and find she wasn't watching those either, it's just the Cult of the Damned lost their matches and haven't lit the fuses yet. No problem. Next, a bit more flailing around picking between totally not murlocs and definitely not furbolgs. At some point, we teleport to the cliffs above Un'goro. It is at this point that the player realizes one of the main themes of Wrath and WoW's future: recycling.

- Now, back to Icecrown! At last, we storm the Lich King's stronghold, right? No, first we have a junior high debate on morality between Faildring and the Knights of the Emo Blade, with a reference to a famous bug in Classic. We push our way into the zone, taking quests for both the pallies and dks, who ask us to "tell them I'm not speaking to them."

We arrive at the front lines, only to have the Horde show their "honor" and complete lack of anything resembling brains by providing fresh Alliance corpses for the Scourge to raise. We begin a series of quests going up and down to flying dreadnaughts bristling with heavy weapons, raising the question of why the hell we had anyone on the ground in the first place. Shh, don't expose the gaping plot holes!

Go meet a creepy little ghost boy, with a name that is in no way an anagram of Arthas Menethil. (Man, we are so good at subtle writing!) We learn that a frontal assault is completely doomed to failure and see dk Arthas slaughtering people. We must understand that the Lich King is not Arthas anymore. But he is. But he isn't. We'll get back to you on this, ok? Metzen would give a ruling, but he's busy rolling in money. In any case, you'll have to think of an unconventional way to approach and attack the Lich King. No, flying dreadnaughts don't count.

Congratulations, you're 80! Go take out Kel'Thuzad, whose previous defeat changed his voice. Also, if you could take care of this black dragon, that'd be great. Next, go kill an Aspect, what could possibly go wrong? What, don't you remember the three quests you did about this at the start? Now, onto the one story that was built up and told well, Ulduar. On the way, we get a trailer preview of Azeroth's greatest schizophrenic, Garrosh, who hates humans for no discernable reason beyond missing his daddy. Despite the threat of Yogg-Saron, an Old God of unspeakable power, GARROSH TRY SMASH PUNY HUMAN! Varian points out the Wrathgate again… Dammit, Bill, we told you Metzen will fire us if you make Thrall look bad!

We go through Ulduar, with fantastic atmosphere, music, and Titan Watcher and Old God story development, and corner the god of death, responsible for some of the greatest evils in the world and… HEY GUYS I BUILT A CARNIVAL WHERE YOU CAN FACE A YETI! IT WILL CHALLENGE YOU!

Fine, Tirion, if it will make you happy. Wait you built this in Icecrown, on the Scourge's back porch? So what part of subtlety is hard for you, Faildring? Are you just doing your part to uphold the proud RPG tradition of Lawful Stupid paladins? Garrosh continues cutting Thrall's balls off in public, and as a result, still more bodies are made available for the Scourge. Surely not, you say, there are tons of champions and paladins present and… Shit, the Lich King himself just walked in! Well, this is unplanned, but certainly the best time to attack him, with all the combined might of Alliance and Horde. Orrrr Faildring could just trash talk a bit and everyone sits on their hands while he dumps us in the caverns below. Told you the Funfair of Failure shouldn't have been built here.

Despite being placed into a death trap with tunnels leading back to Icecrown Citadel, giving a golden opportunity to strike in an unexpected way… Despite the entire expansion telling us that a frontal assault is doomed to failure… Despite all the buildup of an entire year's worth of story, what do we do? Go smash the doors down with a rather tiny battering ram. We fight two bosses for exactly no reason, because we have flying dreadnaughts that could take us all the way up, since the whole tunnel thing was abandoned. (Gee it couldn't possibly be that the Funfair was a thrown together patch, hinted to avoid a long Ulduar farming period…)

We fly upwards and regardless of your faction, you groan as the idiotic faction war rears its head again. We have a Hallmark moment between Varian and Saurfang so that the Alliance will go back to the default status of ignoring all the shit the Horde pulls. Also, hopefully this distracts you from "Why don't we just fly up to the Lich King and bomb the shit out of him?"

Three wings and some nightmare fuel voice acting later, we finally arrive at the Frozen Throne itself. The Lich King, who is Arthas but is not but is, and Faildring flirt with each other more, and Faildring proceeds to step into a Freezing Trap and forgets that he can bubble. LK kills us all, and begins mustache twirling on a level not seen since Snidely Whiplash. Faildring finally remembers bubble, managing a speech inside the Freezing Trap. LK goes from incredible threat to literal pinata in seconds. With his death, Faildring and Bolvar argue over who's the bigger edgelord, because Arthas, who was gone, but wasn't, but was, but wasn't was holding back the Scourge. Even though everything ever written clearly states "mindless undead directed by the will of the Lich King", somehow they're a bigger threat because reasons. We'll never finish this expansion if you keep pointing out the shitty writing!

Oh hey, you're still here. After entirely too long of "there must always be a Lich King" with no plan whatsoever to, oh say march the Scourge into a volcano, Alexstraza suddenly gives a damn about her shrine. Go fix it, will you dear?


Now, hopefully you laughed at this reminder of just how bad the writing in Wrath really was. If instead you got angry, or are busily writing to nitpick with "Actually…", you really need to stop taking this so seriously.

[Mehrunes]

WotLK. It's the one that is the most consistent and on point. Of course it had its issues. The Lich King was turned into a Scooby Doo villain with a dash of the main bad guy from Inspector Gadget. The writers couldn't stick to one story about the nature of the Lich King and the fate of Ner'zhul (though a lot of it came only in tweets and blue posts after 3.3 already released). The ending was abhorrent as is always the case ("there must always be the Lich King", the inane single-minded focus on Argent Crusade and Tirion in particular @Super Dickmann mentioned that sidelined people with way more ties to the Lich King like goddamn Sylvanas) but at least it was just that, the ending. Whereas in expansions like Cata or MoP the story elements that made the ending abhorrent started appearing halfway into the expansion if not earlier.

[Necromind]

Easilly Mists of Pandaria. (Although i still like Wotlk, BC and Cata story)
It starts as just Alliance/Horde war, but moments later you are being stranded in strange new place with new allies and mysteries. Gradually you build alliances and prepare ground for your faction's invasion force. Before 5.1 game foreshadows what is going to happen when they arrive but you do what needs to be done to win. THE PLAYER is the greatest cataclysm that struck Pandaria since the Sundering.
Even Garrosh was decently treated. He was a prideful and angry orc for right reasons, that damned himself when he set foot in Pandaria, where Sha feed on, corrupt and amplify the worst emotional traits of any being.
Although it sucks Horde had to raid it's own Warchief, (who was more that justified being a jerk even before Sha) and Alliance getting stupid cat quests and helping Horde depose Garrosh instead of dealing a lethal blow to their enemy. Replaying the intro lately really changed my view on Garrosh going Orc-Hitler in 5.3.

WoD felt underwhelming and a waste. They could have pulled Pandaria 2.0 and strand us in Draenor with Orcs/Draenei/Demonic Invasion, making it so we can only go home when we manage to establish another link to our planet. But they didn't and we play orc exterminator whole expantion. And in the end they went and Retconned demons. The demon retcon is easlily one of the worst things in Warcraft lore. Afrasiabi should give his salary back to Blizzard for such a bad idea.

The problem is that the Expantions afterwards are built on top of THAT. I couldn't take Legion story seriously anymore, they were robbed of power. I knew Legion won't do shit because in thousands of iterations of the same events they never learned. BL related stuff was just hard to follow for me. Local stories were fun, Suramar was pretty epic story. Argus was a bit rushed to wrap all BL stuff and looked like a rocky wasteland, but was ok ultimately. I dind't personally like that TITANS ARE DEAD and Azerorth is a Titan reveal, it sort of killed the mystery.
Opening was pretty strong, but after that factions dissapeared into background and gave way for Class Halls. And many of class halls stories were really good.
I found weird that of all people, Blizzard has chosen Sylvanas to become WARCHIEF(I mean who cares, there's already a troll), that cound have gone somewhere and that went nowh... oh no!

BFA is just a mess. It's not Pandaria, it's not Legion, It's a mess built upon a mess.
They foreshadowed Azerite being some kind of superweapon that will change the war and that literally went nowhere beyound magni quests with HoA and some isolated Azerite weaponry here and there.
All conflict centered around Sylvanas killing stuff because "SHE SURE IS AN ANGRY EVIL LADY AMIRITE GUYS?", nonsensical Burning of Teldrassil so Alliance can attack Undercity and die there in a trap is such a gambling plan that didn't pay off. Also Ice magic can clense Blight now, didn't Apothecaries know that? How could they miss that?
Saurfang acting like a baby while being a General, Horde betrays itself again, Sylvanas going full evil because Shadowlands, destroying forsaken lore in the process. Oh and Nelves can't take revenge on the Horde because that would be bad for Alliance image.

Zone stories were sort of ok. Zandalar Attack was fine and Jaina's reunion with mother was hearthtouching imo.

[Combatbutler]

Overarching story wise? None, as far as I am concerned there never was a good expansion story ark, just nice bits and pieces here and there throughout these xpacks.

[Aucald]

It's a tie between WotLK and MoP for me - I found their stories to generally be the most cohesive and essentially linear. Legion is a close runner-up despite some slapdash elements to its storytelling.

[Brocksley]

Seems like there were great elements in each expansion, but there was always at least one total shit moment. Such as lack of central villain in TBC, despite there being a pretty cool underlying story. Or the end of legion where all this antorus and sargeras stuff was rushed and just felt like a mess. Or in warlords there were some amazing stories told in the leveling, such as the arrakoa, but the whole time travel thing was just stupid. I think BFA stands alone in being almost completely bad from start to finish.

[Aresk]

Like most of the posts thus far, WotLK and MoP are the front runners for me in terms of pure narrative storytelling, though I gave it to MoP as a standalone expansion because it really made Pandaria feel like a cohesive continent. WotLK seemed to rely too much on WC3's narrative to give any real gravitas to Anub'arak and Kel'thuzad, and it had some odd tangents (Argent Tournament, for one, but also Grizzly Hills and Scholazar Basin felt oddly disjointed from the rest of the continent, to me at least.

If we're looking for best Warcraft storytelling, MoP would fall off for me since its elements are rather separate from the elements told throughout the overarching Warcraft setting, and at that point I'd probably have to go with WoD or TBC (the former for its ties to the catalyst of the whole series, the latter for tying elements of so many games together, particularly with Caverns of Time).

[McNeil]

WotLK has the best story, theming and setting. It does a great job telling a proper and consistent story while also doing proper side stories like the entire Ulduar build up. MoP probably does make the best new lore where the expansions setting feels more fresh, but it suffers a lot from making most zones rather forgettable from a story perspective. It had some good moments like the battle at the jade statue and the fight against the mantid at the wall.

I find that vanilla WoW did the best world building, but its also not an expansion.

[Maljinwo]

Mists

/thread

[keelr]

I think MoP had the best story. TBC and Wrath did great too, but that was just the finish of what they built up in the Warcraft games.

[DemonHunter18]

WotLK > MoP > Vanilla > Legion > Cataclysm > WoD >>>>>>>>>>>> SL >= BfA