Which expansion was the absolute worst?

[Dalheim]

Imo, BFA/Legion are the worst, at least to me personally. I enjoyed WoD more than those, mainly due to gameplay.

Every expansion has had its good sides for me as well though, so I can't say I hate any expansion I've played.

[Aggrophobic]

Legion, by far.
Shadowlands is looking to top that though.

[CylomDashti]

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

As much as I actually enjoyed farming the essences and 8.3, the gameplay is just not fun at all.
Legion was when they fucked up many specs in the first place. Only reason it's not last cause it introduced m+. A new way of playing the game (I prefer the CMs honestly).
And WoD while lacking, and destroyed professions, at least was fun to play.
Cata was honestly real fun at the start of the expansion, this is when I leveled all my alts to max also, cause of the revamp.
TBC is where I started playing and I still go to private servers sometimes just to have fun leveling up and re-experiencing it.
MoP was loads of fun, most of the hate back in the day came from "blizzard catering to the chinese market", but the expansion itself was solid.
Say what you want against wrath, sure it was easy and there was some balancing shenanigans(Which expansion didn't have some?), and there isn't much to do once you progressed. But class gameplay, PVE, PVP and leveling were just top notch. Not a lore person myself but listening to Lich King's theme in the latest animations made me tear up. Also had best raid that is Ulduar, shame they didn't continue using the hardmode concept.

No vanilla cause I didn't play back then. probably between WoD and Legion tho.

[Demithio]

This again. Well, I'm glad to see Cataclysm is no longer the primary villain. Next worst expansion in the world: Shadowlands. Are we seeing a pattern? All of the worst rated expansions fall into the "New WoW" category.

[ThiagoTorres]

Vanilla isnt an expansion and i didnt played it.. wod was bad but dam, bfa is terrible af

At least i really enjoing garrison (besides blizzard gave up of it in beta test and was obviously incomplete) and pvp.. wod pvp was so good and leveling experience was one of the best for me

idk what is good in bfa lmao

[mizeri]

its always the current one

[Eldrathian]

It's funny how everyone has their own opinion, but if you take this poll and say anything besides WoD, then you're just lying to yourself, or your memory is short.

WoD will ALWAYS be the worst expansion if for no other reason than you sat in your garrison, ALONE.
Talk about killing the immersion. Just sit in your little house, phased off from others, basically playing an app.

Also, the story was kind of dumb. WE freed Guldan. Us, the player(s). Because we were so worried about the Iron Horde, but by the end we're like "lets me friends!".
There was no reason that once we freed Grommash, that he wouldn't continue to build an army for conquest. Wouldn't he be ever more pissed that all his plans were ruined by us, because we freed Guldan? But we just ignored that. Honestly it was bad story telling.

ALSO, even though you the reader might disagree, classes were shit if we're being honest.
We got pruned into oblivion.
Lots of nerfs to 'fun' as well. (example: you could no longer use a parachute cloak type effect after using a movement boost ability)
All it all, it felt a lot worse to play in WoD, than it had in MoP.


There were pros, sure:
Great zones (art)
Leveling was fun (at first), coming through the portal, building a garrison. (little did we know we were building our own private hell)
A couple of really neat dungeons that felt fresh. (The train anyone?)
The raids were pretty neat too.
It set up Legion nicely.

None of these pros were enough to prevent this from being the worst expansion in WoW history by a wide margin.

[Beloren]

Every expansion improved the game. The features that affected the communities the most were not expansion features so you can’t blame the expansions for them.

Everyone improved things over the previous except perhaps BFA at launch though 8.2/3 made things better.

This makes classic the worse iteration. And bags my vote.

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Ofc I reckon most people are gonna vote based on the period of play they felt was the least favourite rather than which version the game was at its worse stage

[plz delete account]

This again. Well, I'm glad to see Cataclysm is no longer the primary villain. Next worst expansion in the world: Shadowlands. Are we seeing a pattern? All of the worst rated expansions fall into the "New WoW" category.

Cata is still third. Legion, MOP, SL all among the top expansions. BFA was accurately predicted to be a bad expac in the last poll, so hoping this means SL will be a great one.

[Beloren]

Cata is still third. Legion, MOP, SL all among the top expansions. BFA was accurately predicted to be a bad expac in the last poll, so hoping this means SL will be a great one.

It won't. But it seems to at least course corrected BFA's problem back to something similar to Legion, but whether it would be as liked is debatable. Legion had a lot of character and TLC, a lot of attention to detail and fantasy that really gave it personality - the whole shadowlands thing even being fun, would also feel weird.

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Vanilla isnt an expansion and i didnt played it.. wod was bad but dam, bfa is terrible af

At least i really enjoing garrison (besides blizzard gave up of it in beta test and was obviously incomplete) and pvp.. wod pvp was so good and leveling experience was one of the best for me

idk what is good in bfa lmao

But vanilla is a version of the game. Despite all my fond experiences, it is the worse version of the game because every expansion made improvements over the previous. And while some expansions made bigger improvements than others did, they were all improvements, even BFA that started off worse, ended up improving on Legion even though the Legion approach was better, they ended up doing enough other things to improve it.

Btw, is that you in your avatar, drinking a beer? Looks like somewhere in Europe.. UK? London?

[shadowmatrix]

In other places, they could call it addiction.

Addicted people tend to be the exact opposite, they come up with reasons to claim even shit smells like roses. IMO The people who are actually addicted to the game don't stop playing long enough to post on forums.

[Firebert]

Imagine people saying things like "EVERYTHING AFTER MOP WAS SH*T!!!", and then paying for the next expansion again. If I don't like something, I don't play it. Where's the point on buying a game "I DISLIKE SINCE MOP!!!!"? How sad is that?

Game is good, just falls below expectations.

[ThiagoTorres]

It won't. But it seems to at least course corrected BFA's problem back to something similar to Legion, but whether it would be as liked is debatable. Legion had a lot of character and TLC, a lot of attention to detail and fantasy that really gave it personality - the whole shadowlands thing even being fun, would also feel weird.

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But vanilla is a version of the game. Despite all my fond experiences, it is the worse version of the game because every expansion made improvements over the previous. And while some expansions made bigger improvements than others did, they were all improvements, even BFA that started off worse, ended up improving on Legion even though the Legion approach was better, they ended up doing enough other things to improve it.

Btw, is that you in your avatar, drinking a beer? Looks like somewhere in Europe.. UK? London?

Isnt real me.. vanilla isnt a version of the game, IS the original one, first release.. you cant compare it with expantions that fixes some problems

[Mafic]

BFA beats out WoD easily.

BFA has a fisher price class design and they still cut content to work on the new expansion. At least when they cut content with WoD they produced legion.

[Basileus]

Pretty hard tie between Vanilla, BFA, and WoD for me.

Garrisons were a letdown compared to what they told us. Looking back, Vanilla was really only fun for raiding, the world sucked, questing sucked, the classes sucked, and dungeons sucked. Plus, it's easy as hell compared to raids in retail. BFA has been a shitshow of up and down bandaids to fix issues that would have never happened if they listened to feedback.

Legion and MoP had the best class designs in the game for a majority of classes. Not all classes, but most.

Putting my vote for vanilla though.

[Lazuli]

Pretty even tie between legion and bfa for me, since thats when class design was ruined. I can always find something to do in a game, but if class isn't fun, then fuck it. My rogue was demolished.

[Beloren]

Pretty even tie between legion and bfa for me, since thats when class design was ruined. I can always find something to do in a game, but if class isn't fun, then fuck it. My rogue was demolished.

I had the most fun in Legion than any other version, incl vanilla.

BFA despite everything was worse until 8.2 where my friends and I actually started having fun playing it.

It ended much better than it started. I can’t say the same for WoD.

End game has been much more engaging, meaningful and fun from Legion onwards. Dungeons became challenging again, grinding and playing in the world actually had purpose and meaning to go about doing even grindy world quests.

They may have been grindy, but every activity built up to something and had a value, they just needed to improve on that.

For the first time as well raiding wasn’t the be all and nend all nor the only way to gear up for the highest raid setting, mythic, increasing value of other activities. Every activity had value, I could enjoy the outdoors and not feel it was a waste of time.

I also liked how world pvp was spruced up, before Legion it was completely dead. The new system was better. BFA war mode was an improvement.

[oblakoff]

After 5-6 years or so, when we get next sub-par expansion there will be topic on MMO-champ how current is the worst and BfA was actually not-so-bad, just the same as we have now for WoD.

Let's make a tier list, with note that Vanilla - with it's flaws and strengths cannot be judged since it was the first and none of the other will exist without it. Also it is technically not an expansion. It is really not fair to judge Shadowlands now.


S TIER:
Burning Crusade - first expansion, we got Illidan and lore-familiar characters, we got COOL new races, we got whole new world, we got flying, MANY dungeons, raids that stayed relevant for whole expansion, arena, actual PLAYABLE specs - basically what WoW should've been at launch.

Wrath of the Lich King - We got the best written villain in WoW (before and since), death knight, great raids and trial of the crusader, MANY dungeons, superb lore, absolutely best zones in the game (Grizzly Hills, i am looking at you). It is one idea behind BC because some of the systems that degrade the community started there.


A TIER:
Legion - lorewise Legion ticked all the boxes - greatest threat we've known to day as a main villain, Illidan's, Tyrallion's return, Suramar and other great zones, superb raids, great aesthetics (Nighthold tier is great for almost every class). The idea of artifact weapons (not so much the systems), class order halls. Not to mention the systems we got that will last (rare thing for Blizzard) - mythic+, scaling zones and world quests. Great cinematics as well, a significant step ahead in storytelling. It is behind BC and Wrath just because of the mess with initial artifact system and RNG legiondaries. Other than that - may be the most significant expansion in terms of end-game content with introduction of M+.


B TIER:
Mists of Pandaria - Blizzard actually put all their skill and imagination in this - in every system, class balance, endgame content, class balance, stories, artwork...and it wasn't enough to salvage the panda thing. If only the theme and the new race was something that did not start as an April fool's joke it may have been up there in the A TIER or even S. The unfortunate collateral damage of this was also the monk class - really fun to play, but forever associated with Pandas. Also may be the best class balance that ever was in the game up to this day.


C TIER:
Battle for Azeroth - It swung...and missed - so much systems that could've been great - warfronts, islands, alternative progression system. All of them missed the mark. But this wasn't the worst - i personally liked the idea of faction conflict...which finished in the second patch. Then we killed in two patches and one zone two of the most iconic and hyped Warcraft villains - Azshara and N'zoth - both of them could've been entire expansions on their own. Azerite armor have all the flaws of Artifact system MINUS any of the positives. The stories in the zones were great...and still in the shadow of Legion content. Corruptions were interesting...and impossible to balance. Essences - great...but mindless grind. Raids - hit and miss and the greatest of them - Battle for Dazar'alor - in first major patch.

Cataclysm - The world revamp was needed - anyone who says otherwise either have nostalgia googles or simply did not played before that. Leveling, compared to Wrath zones or even BC was terrible. It was ok in vanilla when we didn't know otherwise - after two expansions it's flaws showed intensely. At this point it was not even challenging it was just boring and a chore. Some questlines were great before that, yes - but the improvement in questing was immense. And now anyone who is in dire need to experience Rescue OOX-22/FE or Zevra Hooves quests can do so - in classic. Besides that Deathwing is one the greatest villains we've known of at this point - and his presence ingame was underwhelming. The boss fight was innovating and frustrating - not fun in both encounters. Endgame zones was passable and some of them innovative (Vas'Jir) but generally all over the place. Raids was cool, besides....the end tier which left a sour taste. Firelands patch was top notch.


D TIER:
Warlords of Draenor
Wait, wait, hear me out - i don't hate WoD - i am just sad, because it had so much potential and ruined it. Garrison systems was supposed to bring player housing and expand upon it - instead we got something that replaced endgame and player interaction on every level. Zones and leveling were great...but missing large chunks of content. (Karabor, Shattrath, Bladespire, not to mention whole Ogre continent) Azshran was supposed to be a Wintergrasp / Tol Barad Improved but instead it ended up, somehow, even worse and in addition - underwhelming capital hub. Raids were some of the best done in this game up to this date, especially Blackrock Foundry - but only three. Dungeons was also few but on top of that - tedious. Almost half of the story was scrapped altogether and BAM! - Archimonde. WoD could've been right there with BC and WotlK, but it was halfway scuttled and abandoned. Let's not forget that it's launch was the WORST in WoW history (besides vanilla). It's the missed potential, not the expansion itself.

[tru]

My last real raiding experience ended in WOD. I didn't hate it as much as I do bfa. I'd personally rate it at bfa/cata/wod.

BC/ Lk my fave

[Rostad]

WoD was the best of the recent expacs, Legion was a little worse but it had good content even if it was abit sloppy. BfA is just every bad word in a thesaurus.

Warlords was very lacking in content if you enjoy sailing around doing world quests for 14 hours but it had enjoyable classes and PvP gear.

Legion brought the awful rng pvp gear. Elite tiers that you had to farm for weeks upon weeks or wait until the season was over until you could buy it. The actual gear from pvp was awful so you had to do pve to gear for pvp. Because fk the players right. Legion still had some shining spots. Even if it was done flawed and kinda ruined by their artifact weapons system the legion template system was a decent idea.

BfA took everything that was bad in legion and made it worse. This expansion has been wall to wall dogshit. All these grinding systems that people hated they have brought back and increased in scale. PvP gear doesnt really exist anymore besides for cosmetics.