Which expansion was the absolute worst?

[Palapop]

Content wise- it's WOD. No competition.

But "game quality"-wise- BFA. No competition. Azerite gear, essences, rng M+ key, rng M+ chests, rng PVP chests, rng IEs, rng corruptions, rng corruption vendors, super bad class design, super bad catch-up mechanics.... Sad, sad, sad....

Therefor BFA wins.


BUT... at other hand- BFA is 1 of the MOST BEAUTIFUL expansions ever.

Drustvar, Stormsong Valley, Tiragarde, Nazjatar... these zones and their OSTs are..... MASTERPIECE!

[Valdhammer]

Content wise- it's WOD. No competition.

But "game quality"-wise- BFA. No competition. Azerite gear, essences, rng M+ key, rng M+ chests, rng PVP chests, rng IEs, rng corruptions, rng corruption vendors, super bad class design, super bad catch-up mechanics.... Sad, sad, sad....

Therefor BFA wins.


BUT... at other hand- BFA is 1 of the MOST BEAUTIFUL expansions ever.

Drustvar, Stormsong Valley, Tiragarde, Nazjatar... these zones and their OSTs are..... MASTERPIECE!

I was really excited about the Alliance zones and the overall themes of BfA. So frustrating how Blizzard manage to fuck it all up.

[DeltrusDisc]

I voted BFA but really I could go BFA or WoD.

Things they had over each other:

BFA: has more to do, especially challenging solo content, i.e. Horrific Visions (or lol not anymore?) and some better, more fleshed out daily zones, i.e. Mechagon, Azshara-land, but then... Idk what happened with the corrupted zones. Kinda a shame, if anything I think they could have made the zones be even more ridiculous.

WoD: Visuals are better (at least, more my style) I love the whole space-look from Outland and TBC and WoD had a blue and purple Shadowmoon Valley and it was gorgeoussss. WoD's dungeons and raids were overall more interesting.

And they both have their whole hosts of BAD.

[WowIsDead64]

With the end of an expansion comes my biannual worst expansion poll.

Which expansion/era is the absolute worst, and why?

BFA isn't subjectively the worst. It's objectively the worst one.

[Rilas13]

I get the bfa hate, trust me I have done it myself lots. But I don't see how you could say it's worse than WoD. WoD was a DoA xpac that had almost no updates. At the very least, they continued to support BfA for it's lifecycle. That aspect in itself makes it beat out WoD by default. At absolute worst case I have found reasons to log in for content that just didn't exist in WoD. Not even counting the cinamatics and art. WoD Just felt so bloody lazy, on top of the most rediculous story direction.

You may not like bfa story(I know I don't love the directions or the massive arbitrary destruction of just commiting mass genocide and destorying fleets of the other factions military every other day), but WoD was about interdimensional Orcs that they accidentally broke the lore of multiple Burning Legions. At least Bfa's story is contained to Azeroth.

[Kanegasi]

Option J: None

[Malix Farwin]

BFA because at least WoD had good class design.

[WowIsDead64]

I get the bfa hate, trust me I have done it myself lots. But I don't see how you could say it's worse than WoD. WoD was a DoA xpac that had almost no updates. At the very least, they continued to support BfA for it's lifecycle. That aspect in itself makes it beat out WoD by default. At absolute worst case I have found reasons to log in for content that just didn't exist in WoD. Not even counting the cinamatics and art. WoD Just felt so bloody lazy, on top of the most rediculous story direction.

You may not like bfa story(I know I don't love the directions or the massive arbitrary destruction of just commiting mass genocide and destorying fleets of the other factions military every other day), but WoD was about interdimensional Orcs that they accidentally broke the lore of multiple Burning Legions. At least Bfa's story is contained to Azeroth.

As for me, it's better to have few content, but good content, I can actually play, than tons of crappy content, that I don't want to play, so it isn't actually content for me. Really big thing for me - is cross-cutting progression. I.e. when content is series of steps, I can make one by one. When I run out of steps - I just switch to alt and repeat this steps again. I can also do it in pipeline fashion, i.e. level another alt, when I run out of content on previous one. Biggest thing here - it's ME, who choose, what amount of content and what difficulty I need. Not Blizzard. And WOD was just perfect in this case. Leveling to 100, making Garrison, doing Loremaster, making Shipyard, going to Tanaan, getting full Baleful there, switching to maintenance mode, i.e. logging in on that character only to level Garrison, switching to alt. Just perfect casual content. Just like back in WotLK, when every character was able to gear up through series of 5pps - normals, release ones, Coliseum ones, ICC ones. And then just start PUGging ICC. That was just perfect and that's why WotLK had 12M of subs.

[Th3Scourge]

BfA

Here are the 10 reasons why WoD was better than BfA

1. The raids were awesome
2. The classes did not rely on external systems to be playable (Heart of Azeroth level, Azerite Armor, Essences, Corruption)
3 You could roll a new class, hit 120, and jump into a raid with your guildies and be ready to go from day 1 without needing to grind out the systems in point 2 above
4 You didn't have to run the same lazy WQ's and assaults to get currency to run the same content over and over for more currency to buy the corruptions you needed for your spec when they are available on an arbitrary rotation in order to have any meaningful contribution to your raid dps.
5 you could raid log
6 PVP was awesome
7 PVP was way more balanced than it is now
8 PVP vendors
9 The game wasn't a fucking punishing nightmare for returning players. Imagine having to get your essences from scratch in 8.3 (note: you can't buy the essence from the vendor without already unlocking it on a previous character) yeah have fun getting CLF
10 The loot system wasn't RNG on RNG on RNG

[Relapses]

As for me, it's better to have few content, but good content, I can actually play, than tons of crappy content, that I don't want to play, so it isn't actually content for me. Really big thing for me - is cross-cutting progression. I.e. when content is series of steps, I can make one by one. When I run out of steps - I just switch to alt and repeat this steps again. I can also do it in pipeline fashion, i.e. level another alt, when I run out of content on previous one. Biggest thing here - it's ME, who choose, what amount of content and what difficulty I need. Not Blizzard. And WOD was just perfect in this case. Leveling to 100, making Garrison, doing Loremaster, making Shipyard, going to Tanaan, getting full Baleful there, switching to maintenance mode, i.e. logging in on that character only to level Garrison, switching to alt. Just perfect casual content. Just like back in WotLK, when every character was able to gear up through series of 5pps - normals, release ones, Coliseum ones, ICC ones. And then just start PUGging ICC. That was just perfect and that's why WotLK had 12M of subs.

If WotLK were re-released, do you think that WoW would immediately garner 12M subs again?

Because if you do, I have some oceanfront property in Colorado I'm looking to sell.

[matrix123mko]

BfA managed to ruin both factions completely. The horde from now on will always be evil as their members have shown time and time again that they do not value life at all and revel in violence and bloodshet. Hell, even the tauren went to murder children. Not starting with the nightborne, whose first act after being out in the world again is a genocide on their close relatives.
The alliance on the other hand is not only completely incompetent, they also show the mentality of a bully victim that can not stand up for itself. Besides that there is an internal devide that NEVER xan be healed. At this point there is no reason the night elves are in the alliance anymore.

There also is the fact that racial leaders apparently don't care about their subjects and all betray the Horde before it starts making sense.

If 8.25 and 8.3 are the result of this I really wish they had abandoned the expansion.

At least N'zoth could be reused later.

[Soon-TM]

BfA managed to ruin both factions completely. The horde from now on will always be evil as their members have shown time and time again that they do not value life at all and revel in violence and bloodshet. Hell, even the tauren went to murder children. Not starting with the nightborne, whose first act after being out in the world again is a genocide on their close relatives.
The alliance on the other hand is not only completely incompetent, they also show the mentality of a bully victim that can not stand up for itself. Besides that there is an internal devide that NEVER xan be healed. At this point there is no reason the night elves are in the alliance anymore.

If 8.25 and 8.3 are the result of this I really wish they had abandoned the expansion.

The problem with the story in BfA is that writers committed the "original sin" as far as DM'ing goes: you don't turn the RP of already existing races/organisations on its head just because you want to write some crappy fanfic. Thrall's Horde was never supposed to be the bad guys; Garrosh could be an outlier, kind of an "oops daddy Thrall dropped the ball" moment - and that was stretching it. Lo and behold, in BfA they were depicted as being even worse than Garrosh's True Horde (at least Garrosh, crazy and all, didn't bomb his own cities).

In the meantime, the Forsaken, the one unquestionably evil element in the Horde, were turned overnight into a bunch of pitiful sadsacks, who wanted nothing but to hug their living relatives under MILF Calia's benevolent gaze. Now, I don't know how many players rolled especifically Forsaken in order to RP goody goody two shoes, but chances are they aren't a huge lot (those interested in the story, at least). The evil psychos were all of a sudden cast as poor oppressed souls, completely dependant on a dudette who has spent the last 15-20 years hiding on a barn, and has almost nothing in common with them... other than being Arthas' sister and Anduin's BFF lmao.

And I won't mention all the BS the Alliance had to eat as well, with the sole purpose of propping up Our Treasure. The "faction pride" expansion made the Horde ashamed of itself, with the Alliance getting massively cucked once again. Faction pride indeed

[Alkizon]

So, it's kind of one of those threads:

13. Some thoughts about "best expansions"(worst, also WoD&MoP&Cata&WotLK) +(+/+/+)+/+/+/+

I still think, that transition periods are the worst...
- tl;dr -
BfA didn't introduce many actual course changes as did Legion, therefore, if we take inheritance of methods, then Legion still keeps bar of the worst expansion ever, while BfA isn't considered here as something separate. Here quotes for some more information:

Therefore, statement that “WotLK influenced failure of Cataclysm” have place for existence (only that problem here isn't in sequence, but in methods' inheritance), since they began “familiarize” with subsequently realized unsuccessful design solutions in it. WotLK was an inappropriate experiment, results of which were misinterpreted, and Cataclysm became consequences, Pandaria was result of cleansing Cataclysm, WoD was PR bomb and great overestimation of current own capabilities without correcting wrong design trends (in theory, it should have been excuse for 3 previous expansions, maybe they even understood that they were wrong, but it was already late and they only made even more critical errors, my personal experience ends here in connection with new models advent, everything further is more likely theoretical sampling speculation), Legion - is already corporate experiment to obtain long-term profits (this time experiment was a success, just its goal was no longer respectable, but fully money based, because they urgently needed something to "pay" for WoD compensation), BfA is "based on reduced budget" dried rot of ideas left after Legion, and Shadowlands dosn't really change much of main BfA stuff.

I could say that Legion was the 2nd Cataclysm (transitional moment in game design history) and BfA already is its 3d degeneration (hint that last trends won't only not go away, but will continue and only increase), but don't want much to abuse negative, in addition, BfA continues Cataclysm's tradition of "Azeroth's face" bad changing.

By the way, it's relatively easy to compare them in regards changes in general: BC and WotLK are Classic's continuation from system's point of view, Cata is transitional period, WoD is continuation of MoP, Legion is next transitional+expansion period and BfA is its semantic continuation. But, unlike Classic system's additions, remaining "successors" (WoD and BfA) didn't complement/complicate anything for their systems, but only cut out stuff. Although, even with last in mind, "change/destroy expansions” will go at the very bottom of my list (WoD and BfA would go here just like semantic additions in all comparesons, not like stand alone expansions). If they'd continue to supplement/adjust system simply by supplying players with new content, then all these threads-comparisons would have at least some sense, but now... it's simply “war of different systems”.

ps. If someone will disagre or fill offended, I'll understand, but keep in mind (according to first link in message) that I tried to be quite impartial and not even take into account fact that WoD made the most inappropriate and gamebreaking change for me in the game, after which I had to say goodbye to it. Gameplay is something, that outplays content part.

[Doffen]

So, it's kind of one of those threads:
I still think transition periods are the worst...
- tl;dr -
BfA didn't introduce many actual course changes as did Legion, therefore, if we take inheritance of methods, then Legion still keeps bar of the worst expansion ever, while BfA isn't considered here as something separate. Here quotes for some more information:
ps. If someone will disagre or fill offended, I understand, but keep in mind (according to first link in message) that I tried to be quite impartial and not even take into account fact that WoD made the most inappropriate and gamebreaking change for me in the game, after which I had to say goodbye to it.

You know, I've seen people blame Legion for what we got in BfA, and while not wrong because this is the direction the game is headed(or well less so in Shadowlands), isn't it the devs fault for not doing their job better going into BfA? They clearly saw what they did in Legion was working, and tried to iterate on that, but clearly didn't manage. Shouldn't they fix gameplay in BfA when we lost a couple of abilities, like they did in every expansion before? Looking at Shadowlands, it seems they are working with changes from Legion instead of BfA. It just shows how much they rushed going into BfA, which hurt BfA more than Legion did.

The biggest "offender" however is WotLK who is the reason why we have been taking steps all the way here in BfA now. WotLK made the biggest game breaking change of all expansions, making it simplifiy the game so the game gained accessability. Its the expansion that preceeded to get rid of rpg elements and also introduced LFG. Tier gear from vendor was unheard of in vanilla/TBC, the two highest growing eras/expansions of WoW. Purely from a earning perspective, WotLK did not manage to increase the success as the other expansion before. Personally I think WotLK is overrated. It has not had a good effect on the game in the long run, while I can see it made it better for more people at that time, it wasn't good for the expansions that followed. I had much fun then, but its easy to see what they didn't do so well then. But on the other side, WoW is still here, much thanks to WotLK, and Legion so something they did right. It's weird to blame one expansion for "doing bad" when it was successfull, while also praising it for the same reasons.

It is not really the way to review an expansion, but WotLK and Legion are the two game changing expansions, for better or for worse. But can we say Legion is the worst expansion for the next five expansion just because they did a much needed change then? It just doesn't make sense to blame a rather successfull expansion for the less successfull ones after. You blame the Matrix for Matrix Revolution? But viewing each expansions, the devs missed the point with Cataclysm, WoD and BfA. Instead of doing what they succeded with they tried to do something new and they didn't manage to make it work properly. Cataclysm was thrown under the bus by the Lich King, kinda unfair, I think that should be mentioned. WoD was indeed a PR expansions, Legion were the lifeboat where I suspect they threw all the ideas for the next two/three expansions into one and thus got issues going into BfA because they simply were just out of ideas. So maybe Legion is to blame.

[ro9ue]

WoD closely followed by BFA.

[krouger]

BFA by far .... for me atleast WOD was way way better than BFA

[Alkizon]

Doffen
- snip -

They didn't change stuff in WotLK (system mostly stayed the same, content organization/realization mostly failed), just tried some stuff, for which were get some strikes in head from community. Cataclysm was transition (legalisation of changes, same as WotLK there was MoP+WoD "try" period for Legion) part. As for your words about Legion... any expansion is result of work and decisions of devs, don't you think that your criterion in such context completely doesn't fit in role of comparison parameter, eh?

I'd strongly criticize your "what they did in Legion was working"&"much needed change" part (one of most incorrect and unsuccessful decisions in all areas, from social to organization of content and gameplay in general, were made here - only decisions made during Cataclysm's implementation can compete with them; and no, they didn't benefit system, people who criticized Legion's ones even before it began were completely right in predictions), but topic isn't about that, so *shrugs* this is your opinion, I heard and took note of it, thanks for sharing, but, sorry, it doesn't change anything for me.

ps. There is no point in talking about success in terms of popularity only in terms of efficiency, adequacy and viability of system as a whole (for the same reason, I already mentioned this in topic about best expansion, there is no the best! one).

Doffen
But that's Legions fault eh? :

Yes. These systems were legalized/rooted by Legion, just as Cataclysm once legitimized CR-a-LFR(G), rooted phasing, forced (although not yet fully formed) "circumcision-separation" of classes and so on and so on. It's need to understand where legs grow from for each change (difference is easy to see - if ex-n's design was based on it, was main feature - legalized and strengthened). Now they just cyclically rename and redistribute them without changing general essence. Smoke and mirrors
- source -

Stuff what we see as result is global world crisis that they trying to prevent with building Casino in every city, diverting your attention to external directions that aren't related in any way directly to the main problem. Smoke and mirrors ;] - challenges, events, toys/mounts/pets/selfies/pazzles, brawler's guild, twitter, happy farm (in all 3 variants) - all this for make you busy, distracting from direct play. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind it all, but I just want you to know why it was introduced, how it works - this is content-substitute ('synthetic food'), a little more and game will consist only this. And they want to pay off from you a pair of small multi-storey islands, with couple of dozens of uncomplicated corridors, but forgetting to solve main problem. It's certainly not bad, but you should look into the root, at first you need to restore system's integrity - game universe design, get back to sources and lore
- snip -
But in fact it's long, it's difficult and in the end it's expensive. Moreover, a significant part of current subscribers <url> consists of people of a different type <url>, almost certainly they will resist recovery process, likely more than those, who left, resisted process of destruction. Because then it was done out of reasonable considerations, and now would be due to strong degradation and addiction = more furiously, rudely and stupidly - fanatically..

With correct conclusions from results, Catclysm could have canceled aforementioned WotLK's trends (as well as Legion - wrong trends laid down by WoD&MoP, moreover, added own disgrace directly from announcement), but didn't do it. Could, but didn't, rather on contrary - guilty. Simple.

[Kauko]

I don't know how people even can compare wod to bfa... bfa has it s problems, but still miles ahead of wod. At least here we still have shit to do. In wod, there was nothing. Someone said raids... yea, and that is it. In bfa people are still busy and the prepatch will be here in couple of months.

[Baroclinic]

Vanilla isn't an expansion, so I'm going to have to vote Vanilla as the worst expansion.

[Doffen]

They didn't change stuff in WotLK (system mostly stayed the same, content organization/realization mostly failed), just tried some stuff, for which were get some strikes in head from community. Cataclysm was transition (legalisation of changes, same as WotLK there was MoP+WoD "try" period for Legion) part. As for your words about Legion... any expansion is result of work and decisions of devs, don't you think that your criterion in such context completely doesn't fit in role of comparison parameter, eh?

I'd strongly criticize your "what they did in Legion was working"&"much needed change" part (one of most incorrect and unsuccessful decisions in all areas, from social to organization of content and gameplay in general, were made here - only decisions made during Cataclysm's implementation can compete with them; and no, they didn't benefit system, people who criticized Legion's ones even before it began were completely right in predictions), but topic isn't about that, so *shrugs* this is your opinion, I heard and took note of it, thanks for sharing, but, sorry, it isn't change anything for me.

ps. There is no point in talking about success in terms of popularity only in terms of efficiency, adequacy and viability of system as a whole (for the same reason, I already mentioned this in topic about best expansion, there is no the best! one).

The game changed massively in from TBC to WotLK. The whole design shifted. You know that. And there is of course point in talking about popularity, as it shows what players(the majority wants)

But yeah, thanks for your views too. I don't tell my opinion to change others. What you say about Legion not working is totally wrong, when it comes to both popularity and how the systems worked themselves. BfA's systems proves that as it's both less popular both by the masses and blizzards earnings calls and them backtracking on a lot of the systems. But that's Legions fault eh?

Yeah, it won't change anything. One expansions failure(devs doing it wrong) is not it's predecessors fault. Which shows with Shadowlands character progression is more akin to Legion's than BfA's. I bet blizzard got the picture.

I am not sure if my ironically views in the post you quoted got through, because it's a seriously weird take on it you got.