Rate: Best > Worst Expansion on Raid Quality

[La]

BC > MoP > Wrath > Cataclysm

In terms of the challenge and in terms of the appearance of the raids. Never raided in Vanilla, so no opinion on it. Looked horrible and annoying, tbh.

[Gigapants]

BC >>>> MoP > Vanilla > Wotlk > Cata

I chose to emphasize my liking for BC raiding based on a few things. I hated the idea normal and heroic mode raids. Ulduar was bearable with the on/off mechanics for "hard modes" but once ToTC kicked off the complete separation of each modes it started going downhill from there for me personally. I loved learning the fight once and then being done with it.

Also, the amount of raid content at release for BC has been unmatched to date. Kara, Gruul's, Mags, SSC, and TK were all readily available (after doing the raid quests to unlock SSC and TK of course) from the get-go making it the only time in WoW's history where two tiers were considered to be "current content" at the same time. This gating quest they had for TK and SCC were nice because it gave everyone something to work towards outside of just showing up to raid, and I personally enjoyed that.

[Brakthir]

BC >>>> MoP > Vanilla > Wotlk > Cata

I chose to emphasize my liking for BC raiding based on a few things. I hated the idea normal and heroic mode raids. Ulduar was bearable with the on/off mechanics for "hard modes" but once ToTC kicked off the complete separation of each modes it started going downhill from there for me personally. I loved learning the fight once and then being done with it.

Also, the amount of raid content at release for BC has been unmatched to date. Kara, Gruul's, Mags, SSC, and TK were all readily available (after doing the raid quests to unlock SSC and TK of course) from the get-go making it the only time in WoW's history where two tiers were considered to be "current content" at the same time. This gating quest they had for TK and SCC were nice because it gave everyone something to work towards outside of just showing up to raid, and I personally enjoyed that.

Forgetting the part where Mag, Gruul, TK and SSC were bugged to all hell and back?

[Jeremypwnz]

I did not raid in Vanilla so I won't comment on that.

Rating Mop>Cata>BC>Wotlk.

Mop/Cata on top because of my current guild, awesome people. Wotlk, I was in a few guilds with corrupt guild/raid leaders. Tbc I was like 13 and didn't take it seriously, but it was fun because I was a noob in a guild with 7 BM Hunters and myself being one of the top DPS in the guild (probably because we stacked that 3% damage buff to 15% in our "Hunter" group).

[Secrecy]

Ulduar was extremely good, Icecrown was pretty damn good but I simply can't call an expansion where we had 6 months of horrendous revamped Naxx the best. If tier 7 was even just mediocre, WotLK would probably take it.

MoP has probably been the strongest so far, but we haven't finished it yet. I think Siege of Orgimmar has huge potential to just be another Dragon Soul, I'm sure they've learned their lesson from that but still.

Speaking of which, Cataclysm was just completely awful. Blizzard should be embarrassed they put out Dragon Soul, while Firelands was only "okay" and without Heroic Ragnaros being such a great fight, it would have be quite a terrible tier. Tier 11 was the only good tier but it was completely littered with bugs and, honestly, the tuning was just off. There were too many extremely difficult fights causing progression to take way too long and people to burn out.

TBC > MoP > WotLK > > > > Cata

[Kneepel]

TBC > WotLK > MoP > Vanilla >>>>>>>>><><>>>> Cata


I'm rating this on general feel(story, cinematics, fights, etc).

I loved SWP, BT, ICC, Uludar and actually HoF. Really didn't like Vanilla, probably because we failed hard on AQ40 and oh god Dragon Soul pls die.

[Deleted]

for me it would be tbc-vanilla-mop-wotlk-cata

[Deleted]

Having raided most content every expansion, I'll personally go for MoP > WotLK > BC > Vanilla > Cata.

- MoP because I love the fight design and the overall environment feel.
- WotLK because Ulduar and ICC, got tired of the whole undead + frozen feel though
- BC because Karazhan. I liked SSC and TK bossfights but the 45 min trash respawns early on really killed my love for it.
- Vanilla had some good raids, but the fight design was mostly too simple. Spent most of my time spamming HT rank 4. Also I hope whoever designed Loatheb is already fired.
- Funnily enough Cata had my favorite fight as a healer: Omnotron 10 man HC. But a weak Firelands and even weaker DS killed that expansion for me.

[Cairhiin]

TBC > MoP > WotLK (would've gotten higher were it not for Naxx and ToC being awful) > Cataclysm

Not rating vanilla, while fun, it was in its infancy and lacked the depth of the raids that came after.

[minkage]

1 - BC = Every single raid released that expansion was fantastic. Kara, BT and Sunwell are the standouts
2 - MoP = 2 Fantasic tiers so far. ToT has set a high bar already. If SoO is on par with ToT we can probably bump MoP to the no1 spot.
3 - Wotlk = Ulduar is obviously amazing. I am also 1 of the minority that liked heroic TotGC. Heroic Anub ranks as 1 of my most hard earned and satisfying kills. ICC was pretty decent with a satisfying final encounter with my fav warcraft 3 character.
4 - Vanilla = Really fond memories of ZG especially being responsible for grabbing the windserpents on Hakkar! AQ20 is often overlooked when compared to its 40 man brother. I sadly wasnt good enough at that point to raid naxx :/
5 - Cata = Tier 11 was absolutely fantastic! If only they had kept up the quality for the rest of the xpac :/ Firelands was okay... Heroic Rag was a fantastic end boss. Dragonsoul is absolutely the worst raid Blizz has ever put out.

[Kennyloggins]

MOP > Wrath > BC > Cata > Vanilla

[celinamuna]

MOP > vanilla > bc > cata > wrath

[Deleted]

Probably mop > TBC > Cata > Wrath ------------> the darkmoon bunny -----------> 40 lvl 1 vs hogger --------> and then somewere deep in a pile of shit, Vanilla wow.

[wariofan1]

MoP > Vanilla > Cata > TBC > Wrath.

SoO has to flop pretty hard for me to put MoP behind No. 1, while I don't like HoF, at least MSV was pretty good, and ToES was decent too, while ToT is the best raid the game has ever had imo.

Gotta remember that Vanilla was pretty great for its time (which is how I judge it,) and it did require you to do some pretty odd tactics that haven't been employed since (both for the better and the worse.)

Cata had some pretty good raids with the exception of DS, which imo is the worst raid to ever have been made. If it hadn't been for DS it could have been on 2nd, but then again, I still think raids like Firelands deserved to be longer.

TBC was pretty "eh." It had amazing raids like Black Temple at one point, but then it had Mount Hyjal which was really fucking stupid. Every tier had the good raid and the bad raid, which pretty much evens it out as decent.

Wrath, well, shit. 1 good raid, that being Ulduar, and the rest were easily the worst raids the game has had (or at least right under DS.) OS was... okay I guess, same with EoE, single boss raids were okay, but not 2 in one tier please. The problem came with Naxx v2.0 having to hold an entire tier for itself, and those encounters were horribly outdated. What a lazy thing to do on Blizzard's part. Then there was ToC, which I don't think I need to explain. Aaaand ICC, I'm not really in the mood to go into a big rant about this again, so let's just leave it at the "It was a fucking joke" tier. As I said, Ulduar was good, but the rest, ugh.

[Aedda]

TBC>WoTLK>Cata>MoP

TBC was just awesome, best expantion they've ever made gameplaywise.
WotLK loved Ulduar, perhaps the best raid instance I've played. Also think ICC and ToC was great. Loved the speed of ToC, no trash no bullshit just the flippin' boss.
Cata Firelands was a pretty good one, DS ok, the rest ok aswell
MoP don't know if anyone have noticed how spelleffects just completly ruins every single bossfight, all you see is white, golden, green,blue instead of the animations of the bosses. Tortos is the best example of that. It's just a clusterfuck of colour and imo a pretty bad design.

[Pua]

Firelands is one of the best raids in WoW btw.

That's an interesting thing to say.

I think the Firelands caught it in the neck for other reasons, such as it being one of the smallest tiers in the game's history, or things like the ludicrous spirit cloth oversight. Had the Abyssal Maw been released with another, say, four bosses, I think the Firelands would be looked at in a completely different light. That said, like most of Cataclysm's content, I thought it was too punitive on normal mode and Rhyolith was a horror show.

To answer the OP's question, I'd go with:

Wrath of the Lich King > The Burning Crusade > Mists of Pandaria > Cataclysm.

WotLK brought the best content to everyone (raiding in general, I mean), created PuG communities on servers and let people develop their characters in raids that didn't patronize them. The subscription fall since then isn't too hard to figure out.

Blizzard giveth, and Blizzard taketh away.

[Gondlem]

BC > MoP > WotLK > Cata.

Didn't raid Vanilla. This expansion is very good so far.

[Pua]

OS was... okay I guess, same with EoE, single boss raids were okay, but not 2 in one tier please.

I take your point about two single-boss instances in one tier, but I thought Sartharion was the games best designed encounter to that point, and hasn't been eclipsed since. Designing something to encompass casual/PuG-friendly players, intermediate guild groups, and the hardcore server leaders in a single encounter was, for me, pretty amazing. Yogg-Saron also did it, but I don't think with quite the same panache.

[Deleted]

when talking raid quality, i really liked wrath raids, aside from ToC and icc lasting over a year.

i would put wotlk > mists > bc > cata > vanilla.


icc and ulduar are my two favorite raids. and vanilla raiding was just terrible, and cata would be above BC for me, but dragon soul was so shit and boring it drags everything down.

[Deleted]

BC -> WotLK (mostly because of Ulduar) -> MoP -> Vanilla -> Cata

edit: I really liked some of the fights in Vanilla, Twin Emperors and C'Thun for example and they still are among my favourites today but the majority of the fights were pretty easy compared to today.