I don't think there's ever been a bad WoW expansion

[Deleted]

everything starting with cataclysm is shite.
Vanilla-tbc-wotlk are true wow

[Eurytos]

I actually agree with the OP.

I don't think any expansion is objectively bad. I may have enjoyed one more than another, but not because of the expansion itself. I'm sure others have a similar experience.

I enjoyed Wrath the most because it was the first time I was truly in a raiding guild, doing hard stuff. TBC was great because it was my first introduction to the game, that was an amazing feeling. I enjoyed Cata immensely, as my core raiding group was very closely knit. In MoP, this may have been my first let down with the game. Partly because many of my original guildmates had now moved on. WoD, again, a bit of a let down because I had to move on.

I would rank TBC, Wrath, Cata as my most enjoyable time, and MoP, WoD slightly lower. In Legion I joined a quality guild that I'm now going into BfA with. And things are back on the rise. It can never match my initial involvement with the game, but as a Heroic raider I've never felt like the game was bad.

[Dracullus]

Yeah, OP is a troll, but there is some truth in that. We never had 'bad' expansion ON LAUNCH. Even WoD had high quality dungeons/raids/levelling zones. And since it had "0 grind policy", it was enjoyable for high-end raiders and people with many alts. Legion was total opposite.

Both "bad" expansions - Cata and WoD - have one thing in common - poor patch support. People will even forgive long content droughts (MoP), because they usually remember good parts of the expansion, but almost 0 content after launch usually ends with bad reputation of this expac.

So really not launch, but first year of BfA will tell us how it will be remembered.

[Thagrynor]

WoD wasn't a bad expansion. An expansion that was even so-so would end up devastating World of Warcraft; WoD had major flaws and was relatively bad compared to, say, Mists of Pandaria or Wrath of the Lich King, but it wasn't bad compared to literally any other MMORPG on the market.

Stop looking at things in extremes.

PS: Don't take this post as "I loved WoD", I disliked the expansion because it was significantly below quality for a Blizzard game IMHO, but it was still enjoyable enough that I played it.

All of this said, I feel weird agreeing with Kul Tiras...

Except that when people say that "WoD was a bad expansion", it is implicitly stating that WoD was a bad WoW expansion, relative to the game of WoW and its expansions. Using the argument of "WoD wasn't a bad expansion compared to an expansion of City of Heroes or Runescape or something" is a nonsense argument to make. It is like saying that "The C Class was a bad Mercedes" isn't valid because "Well, it is better than a Kia". Just because there are worse expansions for other games doesn't make WoD not a bad WoW expansion. It was. It is.

OT: You can argue that some expansions are better at certain things than other expansions and some get most everything right, but WoD got virtually every wrong. The story was mediocre (especially given the potential to be amazing given the lore powerhouse characters that were being brought back and introduced into the WoW player-universe), the end game was beyond horrible, I'm told PvP wasn't great (I don't PvP much so I am not wholly certain, can only go by hearsay), dungeons got old fast, the ridiculous nature of having every combination of stat possible on gear due to the removal of Reforging and the difficulties that caused with farming dungeon gear early expansion was asinine, the class design was weak, there were no dailies until late expansion to give people a reason to keep coming back, the isolationist quality of the garrison killed open world socializing. There is virtually nothing it did that would be classified as "good". Tanaan sort of made it a little more playable but even that was too little too late to redeem what a joke of an expansion it was.

Legion, MoP and WotLK were still, at least in my opinion (and I think many others' too, but I won't speak for them) the best 3 expansions in terms of getting the most right and the least wrong. None were perfect, but they were far more solid overall than the other expansions. TBC does have a close 4th, but there were still some things that, based on the current state of the game/players, would be difficult to deal with these days (no real catch up, so you had to carry people through Tempest Keep and SSC if you needed people to fill spots for BT or Hyjal, and needed to get through those two if you needed fill ins for Sunwell, as just one example). Cata wasn't horrible, but it was, at best, a 50/50 expansion, with it tipping towards the bad side. WoD was mostly just garbage though.

[Theangryone]

WoD was definitely a poor expansion and Ashran was/is fucking horrible.

[therealbowser]

Except that when people say that "WoD was a bad expansion", it is implicitly stating that WoD was a bad WoW expansion, relative to the game of WoW and its expansions.

I want to stop you here. I agree, but not entirely.

The title says "I don't think there has ever been a bad WoW expansion." Likewise, most of the time I hear people say "WoD was terrible" not "WoD was a terrible expansion compared to _____." I don't assume things are implied in most cases; if someone doesn't outright state it, I assume they are not comparing it.

WoD however is a fair thing to compare, but the OP's post literally is explaining that he believes there hasn't been an expansion that was just flat out bad, IE compared to a game that is absolute zero on a scale of 0-100 with 0 being the worst and 100 being the best. WoD is probably a 70~ at worst and an 85~ at best (I'd have to analyze it carefully, and my perception of it has likely changed over time). Now compared to any other WoW expansion, WoD is unquestionably the worst, but the title explicitly described it on its own merit, not compared to other expansions.

In short, I agree that WoD is the worst WoW expansion. However, I believe that no WoW expansion has ever truly been 'bad'.

On the other hand, I disagree that when people say "WoD was bad" that they are simply comparing it to other expansions.

People look at things in extremes, very few people are able to percieve a middle ground in these kinds of cases, it's either "OMG WORST EVER" or "OMG BEST EVER", to be fair you need context and limitations to truly have a 'middle ground' to compare anyways. For many people, that absolute zero is WoD, and if we ever get a worse expansion, WoD will be 'okay' or 'slightly bad', etc.

My two cents.

---Off Topic, discussing WoD---

I don't really feel like debating the merits of WoD too heavily, but I'll dabble a little in that.

I felt like the leveling experience -- specifically the story -- was above average. While it had a very bad foundation (OMG time travel, but not really, wat? Go all the way, or don't got at all... so wishy-washy), the story flow itself was actually pretty fun. Being able to make choices -- IE, you got a different quest chain in many zones based off of which structures you built -- improved the story directly, and even then the stories themselves simply weren't that bad IMHO. WoD (before the recent leveling changes, obviously) had one of my favorite leveling experiences of all of the expansions in the game.

All of this said, everything past that point was atrocious. Virtually all of the post-game story was awful. The Garrison compaign was really boring and all over the place, and Tanaan Jungle was a disconnected, convoluted nightmare in terms of trying to tell a coherent story. I despised High Maul (and never understood why we went there), and I disliked Blackrock Foundry as well.

Worst of all, the ending (Archimonde as the end boss, included) was the worst ending that any expansion has ever had. "It's not over." as an ending, with the same race of people he tortured and murdered cheering the primary antagonist as a hero and champion of Draenor, and using a raid boss we defeated in TBC as the final boss of WoD... just disgusting. It's like Blizzard intentionally tried to make the story as bad as possible... to this day I don't understand it.

The 5-man dungeons however were one of the greatest strengths of WoD, and in fact, I'd argue that it was a strength that they didn't get old fast... and we have mythic difficulty for dungeons to thank for this. That was a great addition that was improved upon and mastered in Legion. The dungeons themselves were varied and fun. It's a shame the raids didn't turn out feeling the same way.

Tanaan Jungle as content, while still pretty bad and fairly boring, dramatically improved replayability over grinding those awful apexxis dailies. It definitely wasn't 'good', but I wouldn't qualify it as 'bad' either. It was decent enough to be tolerable.

I feel like WoD mastered the Legendary Quest system as well; it's just a shame that they used such an uninteresting legendary to use it with (IMHO, though I do appreciate its qualities for a progression raid). There was very little arbitrary grinding (no black prince reputation, no forced participation of specific honor battlegrounds that hardly anyone wanted to do), raid progress was pretty straightforward, and it encouraged players to participate in older raid content. My only complaint was that it forced players to utilize the shipyard to complete the last part. (The fact it didn't require Garrison missions was actually one of the things I originally praised about it.)

The Garrison could have been decent, but they cut too much from it. It felt thrown together. A ton of boring chores in a garrison that was barely able to be customized at all. In the end it was just a gigantic gold sink. Legion, again, took the best parts (research and simplified mission table) and made it good. The original features of the Garrison were lauded as being something that was going to turn out to be extremely good; it's not a surprise that when the actual end product turned out to have almost everything people liked about it cut, that it ended up being almost universally hated.

The only thing I like about Ashran was pickpocketing relics as a rogue; Ashran could have been decent. They either needed to do events, or the main battle... not try to mix both and frustrate anyone who wanted to focus on one or the other. Were it me, I would have designed it somewhat similar to Wintergrasp; that you'd have a 'main battle' where your only objective was to push to the other keep and defeat them (maybe with some exceptions, such as the ogre lord), and then 'off hour' where you focused exclusively on bonus objectives that otherwise have no effect on the battle itself. This wouldn't have made Ashran good, but it would have at least made it so it wasn't a convoluted mess IMO. No opinion otherwise on the PvP; that's a numbers game and I am not interested in debating math.

For what it's worth, I completely agree with you that MoP and WotLK were the best expansions of World of Warcraft today (WotLK pulling ahead of MoP IMO).

[Maneo]

Well, as someone who's played this game since 2005 and seen every iteration of every aspect of the devs goofiness, you're definitely wrong.

WoD was by a large a mistake in totality. It segregated players, it broke the economy literally completely, and was overall just badly received. It was a bad expansion.

WoD was absolute garbage calling it bad, is giving it to much credit.

To be fair to it though, the music was fine, the art direction was fine, and leveling (once) was alright. Everything beyond that in WoD was crap... selfie cam really?

[JUNK de LUXE]

WoD and Legion were definitely BAD expansions in my book.

I'm still on the fences on BfA.. if it's still the same "empty" WQ "content", grind your ass off crap, then I'm finally done with WoW. I play WoW to relax.. not to have a 2nd job.