What would you say is the most enjoyable of the 3: BFA, SL, or WoD?

[Orby]

Best to worst from that list: BfA > WoD > SL

I was one of those people that defended BFA (for the most part), except for the last patch the rest of it was pretty okay. I was kept busy throughout, the lore was (for the most part) enjoyable. And yes the expansion had its issues, but every expansion does.

WoD I was kinda on and off and outside of raiding there wasnt anythign to do. Thatw as the expansion where my hunter class died in my favourite class to play. WoD was a good time to level alts though. I still only consider WoD the second worst expansion (although with Shadowlands WoD have moved up to third worst lol)

Shadowlands just might be my least favourite expansion next to Cataclysm. Cataclysm made me quit playing until halfway through MoP, but Shadowlands made me unsub and I may not be returning, so therefore by default Shadowlands is the worst expansion.

[Kalisandra]

paladins, mages, HUNTERS, SHAMANS (elemental especially), WARLOCKS, priests..... EVERYTHING I played back in MOP felt 100000000% better than anything post-legion where 90% dps classes turned into "gainer> spender" trash specs. But I guess that fits the best with "e-sport".....

That was my primary complaint about class design in Legion - everything was build-spend. With over 30 specs in the game there's no reason to have them all use the same fundamental design. Energy pooling should feel different to rage building, which is different to mana-based, and they should all feel different to a straight short-cooldown based rotation.

[Sondrelk]

Funny anecdote in regards to Legiondaries:
Played pretty much only arena at the start of the expansion. Didn't bother to do much M+, WQs or whatever so I didn't get a legendary until months into the expansion. Then I randomly got one from a blingtron package while I was on the wrong loot spec. What an amazing feeling.

I spent most of Legion thinking that I was going to get into playing Arcane mage, but I never managed to get the correct legiondary I wanted to play the spec the way I wanted, so I never managed to get really into it.
Even when 7.3 made gathering Legiondaries easy I didnt get the correct one, and so even though I did manage to get through the mage tower challenge without the Legiondary I wanted I still felt like I got cheated out of learning a fun spec.

To this day I still have not gotten that Legiondary. And I doubt I am the only one that felt this way about some spec or class. Forever being kept from truly enjoying a specific alt or offspec simply because the Legiondary grind was one of the most asinine things the game ever had.

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WoD was actually a great expansion, it only lacked 1 thing ... some other form of content outside of raiding and pvp at max level.
The world was awesome, the questing was great, had some of the best raids ever, some of the dungeons were pretty cool too and there was also Ashran to mess around.
Professions were in a better place too and so were classes ... Demonology had the best iteration ever during BRF.

I mean the world was cool yes, but without anything to really do in them that point is kinda moot. By that logic you can regard every expansion after as having all the content, and also Draenor since you can visit it and get pretty much exactly the same out of it you got back then.

Legion for instance had open world content that really mattered, so outlevelling it already kinda makes what made it special moot, as well as flying undercutting the uniqueness offered by the zones.

[SeshLow]

WoD, but only closely above BfA. Honestly I didn't hate either. In SL I feel more bored. But: I wouldn't disregard Cata so easily, which still takes the cake for worst add-on for me. I'd probably rank everything BC - Vanilla - WotLK - MoP - Legion - WoD - BfA - SL - Cata, with everything up to and including Legion being really good, WoD/BfA being okay'ish, SL a bit on the boring side and Cata so dull it made me stop playing for half a year.

[WowIsDead64]

Well... kind of yes, but it should be formulated a little different. Here is it, we talked about this. Task has no solution, it's needed to make choice, but devs' hands tremble and stomach is cramping from greed. So you got what you got.

It is. Because Blizzard are scared, that some guys could reject switching to alts and quit game due to "nothing to do" instead. And this problem can't be fully solved without separating "main content" and "alt content". Some guys will always be angry about either "too few content" or "too much content". WOD - is the greatest example of "too few content". And compromise isn't good either, as some players are treated as 3rd grade customers and don't get any content within 1-2 content patches.

[Kalisandra]

MOP eles were THE BEST!

Legion Ele was pretty good IMO - Gust of Wind and Stormkeeper were both great fun. Mid-late Cata/MoP was also great (mobile Lightning Bolt cast FTW).

I have no opinion of Enhance, as I've not played it since Wrath.

Resto was great in mid-late Cata (LB casting to recharge mana!) and in MoP - in both expacs you could save whole raids with the proper use of CDs, and bring a whole raid up from 10% to 100%. Being able to tell the other healers "take a break and get some mana back, I've got this", and mean it was awesome. There was a bit of that in WoD but not to the same extent (except late in Hellfire with all the gear), and ever since the CDs have been getting nerfed and nerfed, so now dropping Healing Tide is close to being a non-event. On top of that, from Legion onwards the dev's method of 'improving' Resto's talent 'choice' is to had extra hard casted spells, adding buttons that don't add anything that couldn't be there simply in the form of stronger Healing Rain, Healing Stream, and Chain Heal spells - they nerf the core spells to make room for talents that don't really do anything interesting, just require extra keybinds.

Yeah, I'm bitter. I like Resto healing - I've healed on a Resto from Wrath onwards, and it's still my favourite, not least because the core hasn't changed. But over time a lot of the fun bits have been removed.

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Legiondaries was whined about by a fraction of the playerbase, mainly the people who raided in the top 10% or so. The casual players didn't mind, and actually enjoyed getting that exiting legendary effect. You'd be surprised how loud a minority in this game can be. Paladin gap closer drama in what, 2010 or so, comes to mind.

That was because Paladins had neither a gap-closer nor an interrupt. In the end they gave us an interrupt (as they homogenised melee) in Cata, and not the gap-closer that most of us would've preferred. Of course, they also made Ret absolutely awful to start, with a Mastery that didn't work and Holy Power generation that was just too slow. Once it was fixed, along with some other things, Ret was pretty good and by late Cata it was very strong (well until the proc-rate of Gurthalak was nerfed for Ret (only)).

I don't mind SL but I've played it less than Legion/BFA/WoD so far. I don't mind borrowed power, but the covnenat stuff feels as it isn't really "part of my character", sort of. I feel like the essences of BFA made more sense as a borrowed power than covenent stuff.

I find that I plain don't like one covenant for aesthetic and philosophical reasons, and also that thematically and visually many just don't fit some specs at all.

Oh yeah - another thing WoD wins on - it had tier sets. Yes, it followed the MoP pattern of no tier in the first raid, with the next raid being a sort of half-tier up and having the tier set, which I didn't like. However, that is still leaps and bounds ahead of BfA's complete lack of tier sets, and SL's current lack (and as the devs seem to think Domination sets are equivalent to tier sets, SL may never see tier sets).

[Nerovar]

I spent most of Legion thinking that I was going to get into playing Arcane mage, but I never managed to get the correct legiondary I wanted to play the spec the way I wanted, so I never managed to get really into it.
Even when 7.3 made gathering Legiondaries easy I didnt get the correct one, and so even though I did manage to get through the mage tower challenge without the Legiondary I wanted I still felt like I got cheated out of learning a fun spec.

To this day I still have not gotten that Legiondary. And I doubt I am the only one that felt this way about some spec or class. Forever being kept from truly enjoying a specific alt or offspec simply because the Legiondary grind was one of the most asinine things the game ever had.

It was definitely one of the worst RNG features in the history of the game. Incredibly frustrating to have this little control over your character (which is my main gripe with Legion in general).

[Fabled]

I had more fun in WoD.

[varren]

WoD for the free garrison gold and ill take a boring expansion with 0 content over boring expansions packed with chores

[Uncia Amethice]

Another aspect that I really didn't like about Legion/BFA (it's slightly better in Shadowlands) is the way World Quests really messed up professions. Before then, I could log on for the day and say to myself "well, I feel like working on my blacksmithing today", and go do some mining, or run a dungeon for a recipe drop, or whatever. Then came legion and BFA with most of the recipes and other profession content tied to world quest, and it became "well, I wonder if WoW will let me work on my blacksmithing today". The Legion Archaeology is probably the worst for that - even if you look up the schedule, say you're away on a trip for two weeks and have no internet, and you miss the archaeology weekly quest in there that you need, then no matter what you do you can't work on your archaeology until several months down the line, if you remembered to put a note in your calendar to check back.

[whywhatwhowhenhow]

WoD was a complete abortion! How the holy hell can it be topping this poll? Do you people have short memories? Or just raid loggers?

Same for everyone who didn't like Legion. Baby raiders that didn't get their BiS legendary in the 1st few weeks...

[Frozenbeef]

wod, after like 16 years of subscription to wow, shadowlands was a huge FU to me as a player enough for me to throw in towel in December last year.

Despite what everyone said, i actually liked garrisons

[Adamas102]

While I agree that legion was alot better outside of 2 core issues, namely legendary aquisition and AP for alt specs, I also have press x to doubt that any sane person was fond of getting the original prydaz instead of a dps/healer legendary. This was not a top 10% issue, everyone that steps a foot into a raid on a regular basis is usually not stocked that they had 2 chances to get a legendary that actually benefitted them, before they hit a hidden semi-hard cap on it.

I think a lot of people on this forum overestimate how much the average player cares about gear. I'm sure there were more than a few casuals who felt disappointment when they saw what they got for their first legendary, but for the majority of players they were always a stat boost at the very least.

While I'm certainly a casual now, old habits die hard and I still go out of my way to look up talent and stat min/maxing for even my least played alts (far more than the typical player cares to do). I KNEW when I got a terrible legendary and still I can't say it ever bothered me that much. And I certainly don't care about being behind on things like artifact power or azerite power.

I think when people refer to Legion being good, they mean end of Legion, where issues plaguing the expansion were mostly gone, ie. you had a deterministic way of earning your Legiondary, AP grind was mostly non existent, stuff was account-wide and alts weren't a chore anymore.

Legion is basically 2 expansions - a steaming pile of shit at launch and a great expansion at the end of it.

I think casual players were able to enjoy Legion all the way through. Like I said before, the issues you note weren't issues to casuals so it doesn't really matter that the systems improved over the course of the expansion. Sure, it made things better by the end, but they were fine from the beginning. Or at least that's how it was from my perspective, and I'm fairly certain that most players still play more casually than I do.

[Gimlix]

People who voted for WOD seriously never played WoD.

WoD is legit the worst they EVER created, it even tops Cataclysm which was back then untoppable.

SL is not bad, it just lacks content due bad management once again.

[TheRevenantHero]

I don't know, "I WILL NEVER SERVE" is now in the running for overthrowing this as the stupidest cutscene line ever

You are so painfully right.

[Kalisandra]

People who voted for WOD seriously never played WoD.

Oh, but I did, including all the raids (though only at heroic level, it's true) and a couple of characters, and far, far too many mythic 5-man runs. And I levelled an alt of every class. Yes, it had many issues, and no it wasn't a great expansion. However, it was better than BfA and so far it's better than SL, something I didn't expect to be saying about SL (though there is still hope for it).

[Cosmic Janitor]

I think a lot of people on this forum overestimate how much the average player cares about gear. I'm sure there were more than a few casuals who felt disappointment when they saw what they got for their first legendary, but for the majority of players they were always a stat boost at the very least.

While I'm certainly a casual now, old habits die hard and I still go out of my way to look up talent and stat min/maxing for even my least played alts (far more than the typical player cares to do). I KNEW when I got a terrible legendary and still I can't say it ever bothered me that much. And I certainly don't care about being behind on things like artifact power or azerite power.

I think you underestimate how much people care about loot and how quickly people get annoyed by it, like the little green-eyed loot-whores that most of them are. I also mentioned explicitly raiders, sure the casual that just pets their their hunter pet for an hour a day and is still lvl 52 in Bastion is probably not that much interested in loot, but people that particpate in endgame? Especially when the loot that did have as much influence as back with legendaries in legion and playstyle changes that came with it? Yeah, most people probably care on some level about that, which is why Blizzard kept changing it in rather quick succession.

[ercarp]

BfA for me. I didn't actually play most of the expansion, but I went hard on the last season of Mythic+, and it's some of the most fun I've ever had on WoW.

[Huzzaa]

WoD was the first expansion I got fed up with the Fel Green color and quit the game for nearly a year.
But it is the best of the choices in the list.

SL is a bad option because it's yet to conclude and BFA is forever of an example of how not to design reward systems.

They tried and failed with the overengineering of Azerite, Benthic, Corruption gear. By creating this infinite grind and downgrade with upgrades, kinda showed us how little it was thought about on what it meant to actually get the loot.
It was funny seeing better players loot an Azerite piece and 'lose' bonuses alongside, making them actually worse than their current gear.

This hyperfocus on simming, calculating, whatever to make choices between pieces is what's a turnoff for me.
I play a healer. But as a dps, having to go to 3rd party websites and use seperate tools in-game and sometimes seperate apps(bloatware), shouldn't be the case for simple choices of items with 5 ilvl delta. It should be obvious that one is better than the other. But with the addition of extra effects etc. it isn't.

My advice to the development would be to keep it simple. Don't overclog the game with currencies, gratuitous reputations and so on. This doesn't mean that do nothing. It means, tone it down with the copy-pasting of dull elements to fill the players time.
It's clear that there's a lack of vision and direction how to create a fun experience. Idk how you fix that, but find a way.
Also... seriously, fix the lag. You don't seem to understand how important this is, but it is.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

WoD was easily the most enjoyable of the last four expansions. It was the least offensive. Didn't have anywhere near as much timegating, grinds, lore abortions, and aggravating systems as the following expansions.

I've done indepth reviews for MoP through BFA. Not going to bother with a Shadowlands breakdown. Being worse than BFA is an achievement.





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I'm of the opinion that the game peaked with MoP and then got worse with each expansion. A lot of people said that Legion was the best thing since MoP but I strongly disagree. It has more content than WoD but the quality of the experience was overall worse. If the pattern holds true (and we have no reason to believe otherwise) then 10.0 will somehow manage to supplant Shadowlands as the new worst expansion ever.

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BFA was miles ahead of WoD

WoD didn't have:

• World quest chores. Yes you had to do your Apexis crystal daily but it only took 20 minutes, whereas you had to do at least an hour of world quest farming per day, more if you were trying to farm for your artifact or gaining rep with a faction.

• Mythic+ chores.

• Azerite system

• Tremendous amount of time wasted trying to unlock allied races. Before you can play an allied race, you must first level a character to cap and the grind through a faction's rep to finally unlock the race and create the character you wanted play as in the first place, and then do all of your grinding on it again to get caught up.

• Grinds on top of grinds that made the game alt-unfriendly

• Huge decline in the quality of music

• Horrendously awful storyline

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WoD had the best iteration of classes, aka gameplay.

Only good thing I remember about WoD's gameplay was the Saberon form and gladiator stance.

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they have shown consistantly in the past they have no intention of making the game a solid MMO experience. it continues to slowly devolve into yet another crappy eastern mmo.

At this point it looks like the gaming genre is starting to look like crappy eastern MMOs, period. Battle passes (read: chores) in every game, cash shops that milk you dry, little to no quality content that is padded out by mediocre chores, etc.

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2nd patch doubled down on stupid with garrisons on the sea.

Ah, now I remember how disappointing it was that I couldn't actually do anything with the ships. It was just more facebook game chores. Too bad that South Seas expansion with Kul'tiras and ships you could drive never came to be.

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Another thing I didn't mention in the reviews specifically, but have talked about before:

Roleplaying.

WoD was the last time my server, Moon Guard (the largest RP server in NA at the time), still had an active roleplaying scene. Even during the 14 month SoO content drought, you could still walk through Orgrimmar or Silvermoon or Thunder Bluff or Undercity and see hundreds of players RPing. There were huge server wide RP events every other day. Even though WoD didn't have much in the way of longevity, you could still have a ton of fun RPing. But over time, the RP scene began to die off. During Legion, I remember there not being anywhere near as many people around in Orgrimmar as there were during the the 14 months of SoO or the early days of WoD. Legion was when the shitty writing became really noticeable. BFA brought a lot of people back at the start, hyped for the prospects of their favorite races finally getting storyline progression... but then the shitty writing killed people's investment in the story. By the time of Shadowland's launch, the RP scene on Moon Guard was completely dead. Since Blizzard axed all of the storylines and characters people had any investment in, and since their writing was shit so there was no chance of the new Shadowlands story material to be interesting like Pandaria, pretty much everyone who cared about the lore quit the game.

So another thumbs up for WoD for not totally murdering the RP scene like the latter expansions did.