Which expansion was the absolute worst?

[TheFirstOnes]

"but I didn't even like the raids that much... it was basically orcs, orcs, orcs, orcs for the most part." Can't you use that argument for every raid then?

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For us "good" raider i would say BFA and Legion fighting for the worst to expansion to date.

Y'all got to experience Mythic KJ and gain 2 great raids in the Nighthold, and Antorus. Legion was not that bad of a raiding expansion at all.

[Zuben]

Cataclysm's big sell was world revamp, which largely fell flat and took precious resources away from endgame. Highlights include the Molten Front, then there were some unique experiences like Vashj'ir, but overall it's the expansion I was the least interested to play. That's saying something considering my interests in Warcraft's universe was at an alltime high at that point; joined this very website to consume news about it and subbed to my first Youtubers (Jesse Cox and Totalbiscuit, mostly being about Cataclysm updates at the time).

[ThePainTrain69]

fuk u guys, WoD was one of the best times for Wow. The intimacy of garrisons, the great raids, the perfection of LFG, and the epicness of storytelling -- I have great memories of that expansion. BFA is great too, the aesthetic of it hearkened well back to classic warcraft, the zones were great, the artstyle was superb, though I agree gear was fuking annoying due to azerite and overlapping 4 different difficulties per raid along with mythic bullshit. Catacylsm was the worst, it was an awkward time for wow where blizzard just needed any excuse to revamp zones, there was hardly any progress for features over WOTLK, and they butchered the story resurrecting characters willy nilly like cenarius. Panda was also bullshit, it was just pandering to China, and all Chinese cliches.

[Relapses]

I don't think that's true for all of us though. I also don't think it helps to be overly ironic against said people, because to me you then are not being fair to people who actually got opinions with thoughts behind it. As for someone who loves Legion(me) you seem to think that people who liked Legion are idiots who can't think for themselves.

If it make sense. I agree that forums in general tend to be a bit out of there though. It's not that I don't understand what you mean, just to say that.

I'm not a fan of circlejerks in either direction. I wouldn't say people who like Legion cannot think for themselves but I do believe a lot of the expansion's salient issues get swept under the rug by the community because it represented such an antithetical approach from WoD's. More than anything, however, I'm a proponent of the idea that an expansion's quality (at least relative to threads like this) should be measured not only by your personal engagement with its content but also the experiences along the way. I think many people completely neglect the latter factor when engaging in these "tier lists" and would rather just churn out whatever easily digestable opinion they feel most comfortable appealing to the hivemind.

[Kehego]

*screams from the mountaintops that wod was the worst, while simultaneously asking for no grinding and just being able to jump in and play*

[Eapoe]

It’s 100% “git good”

You want too feel better about yourself and how you “did all you could” by stripping out basically all ways to work on your character except on raid nights.

And blame it on how you are “forced” despite the content cleared months ago with like 50% less dps available.

If you want to raid log, them raid log. It’s not what’s holding you back.

Still lacking that comprehension thing. As stated some people are at their peak of “git gud.” Not everyone has the skill level to play at the same levels. If they did then everyone would be playing in tournaments across the globe, or better yet, we wouldn’t have tournaments because no one would stand out as everyone would be equal skill level.
So yes, some people do feel forced to stay in game to do everything they can to stay up to date and play better.
I even pointed out that the best players tend to grind more than other players at the start of a tier and the taper off.
I’ve also stated personal opinion of liking “raid or die,” as people call it, in WoD because it gives you time to do other things. There’s plenty of examples of lots of other people, on this site no less, that state why they don’t like things in game and how they don’t want to do them but have to.
Guess what, “raid or die” has existed since before WoD. Most xpacs you would log in, maybe do some dailies or PvP, and then raid. You did these things because you wanted to, or maybe there was an item that was good for you, but you never had to do them to stay relevant. You didn’t have to do multiple dungeons or dailies just to get access to another feature that you then had to do to upgrade the main item of the xpac to stay relevant. This wasn’t just a WoD issue. WoD might have had the most emphasis on it, but as Blizzard has tried to give everyone more reasons to stay logged in they have also created systems that become mandatory instead of optional.
So, you can say “git gud” as much as you want without ever realizing not everyone can achieve those abilities like others; or, you can actually develop some intelligence and realize that not everyone will ever have the same skill levels as everyone else and that the content Blizzard has created has become mandatory instead of optional.
As I said, I would rather play a game with content I want to do for fun instead of have to do out of necessity. If Blizzard made things truly optional and still allowed people to raid lot if they chose then we wouldn’t have this conversation, would we?

[Amaterasu65]

Tbh you had nothing to do in WoD besides raiding, but at least classes were fun to play, had more depth, at least talking about mine (Mage), compared to BFA. But you had more stuff to do in BfA, so I guess it's either a tie between bad expansions, or WoD comes up a little worse.

[Doffen]

I'm not a fan of circlejerks in either direction. I wouldn't say people who like Legion cannot think for themselves but I do believe a lot of the expansion's salient issues get swept under the rug by the community because it represented such an antithetical approach from WoD's. More than anything, however, I'm a proponent of the idea that an expansion's quality (at least relative to threads like this) should be measured not only by your personal engagement with its content but also the experiences along the way. I think many people completely neglect the latter factor when engaging in these "tier lists" and would rather just churn out whatever easily digestable opinion they feel most comfortable appealing to the hivemind.

I don't think that's true at all. People tend to overly exaggerate how they feel about stuff, that's one thing, but from the looks of it most people here on mmo-champ do speak their mind, just that some have an issue to keep it to their opinion, without trashing other's opinion. Which seems to be the thing you have been a target of when it comes to this particular topic in various threads.

Legion for many was great because it had many good redeeming factors in it, and it was a direction the game needed. They have never had any expansion perfect, Legion was no exception. But what you do here, again, is to say that peoples opinion about Legion is not 100% valid. I don't think that's the right approach. I have no problem seeing why some people like WoD, or MoP even though I personally think they were not fun enough for me. I don't have to point out that they are mistaken just to validate my opinion. Legion had one flaw to me, Legendaries. Rest was perfect. But I can see that AP and all that shit is not everyones cup of tea. You also seem to like BfA a lot more(or am I mistaken) than Legion, yet it inherit the same flaws and even more of them when it comes to both corruption and several end game system. Why is it that you think BfA did that alright, when it had more rng(corruption) and more issues with their systems than Legion?

Not talking about you in this particular case, but how can someone rightfully say that Legion was trash because of its systems, when BfA's systems were as bad, or even worse? Corruption was worse as it had no Bad Luck Protection compared to Legiondairies, but still you say Legiondairies was so bad when the acquisition of corruption is as bad, or worse? BfA also got 4 systems, compared to Legion's 2. BfAs only "redeeming" factor(not my idea of redeeming, but from the looks of it here on mmo-champ) that it got vendors. Which I personally stinks as a way of progressing your character.

[Tradu]

Absolutely. Whoever says BfA or anything else isn’t being serious. WoD had a Selfie Camera as a patch... and so many other grand issues.

And yet it was more fun to play because specs weren't as bad as they've gotten since and the raids were great.

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"but I didn't even like the raids that much... it was basically orcs, orcs, orcs, orcs for the most part." Can't you use that argument for every raid then?

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Y'all got to experience Mythic KJ and gain 2 great raids in the Nighthold, and Antorus. Legion was not that bad of a raiding expansion at all.

The raids were okay(ToS and to some extent Antorus dragged it down, though), but all the garbage you had to do outside of raids was the problem.

[socialmaker]

BFA by far, Ill take WOD anyday over BFA rented powers.

[matrix123mko]

BfA because of grind and terrible story.

[ek0zu]

BFA was terrible, Legion was not that better though.

[4justice]

people forgets that wod class mechanics at least, before pruning of its last patch, was much much better than legion and afterwards... bfa literally has nothing

[Naiattavain]

the trouble started with legions design hopefully it gets fixed for shadow lands otherwise im quitting... not paying for this nonsense. subtlety rogue player

[Trinkie]

Really disagree with that weird argument, those few raids did interest me little and i prefere BfA raids by far.

WoD was actually one of the best pvp expansions. Another bonus, was no Mythic+, so PvP gear was relevant.

I know, nobody on MMO-C ever plays PvP, but there is that.

Luckily you're in the very small minority. WoD PVP was a shitshow from start to finish.

Another bonus, was no Mythic+, so PvP gear was relevant.

Ehm.. That's not a bonus.

[mostvp71]

Absolutely. Whoever says BfA or anything else isn’t being serious. WoD had a Selfie Camera as a patch... and so many other grand issues.

WoD actually had somewhat decent PvP that wasn’t dictated by PvE gear. BfA forces you to do things like m+/visions/raids just to get BiS for arena. Not only that, but the PvP itself is just garbage and shallow.

To PvPers, BfA is the worst expansion to date.

[Lord Pebbleton]

It's an easy target for sure, and any time a new poll or thread like this pops up, WoD wins. I'm surprised by how close BfA is trailing it, though.

I blame it on end of expansion fatigue/burnout. Also BfA admittedly wasn't a good experience for the majority of people.

As is always the case, at the end of Shadowlands, that will replace BfA as the reviled expansion in similar threads. WoD has the singular, incredible merit of being the staple worst expansion ever and will always have the most votes regardless of current expansion bias.

[mostvp71]

Luckily you're in the very small minority. WoD PVP was a shitshow from start to finish.

Ehm.. That's not a bonus.

WoD’s PvP was still LEAGUES better than BfA’s.

[WowIsDead64]

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

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

Why do you guys post this polls every month? You think players' opinion would change? As always. Current absolute worst is BFA. The worst story, they worst grinds/time-gates/RNG, the worst content. And WOD wasn't that bad. Because WOD was bad not because of itself. It was bad because devs abandoned it. But I actually liked 6.2. Currently it's my favorite patch! If whole xpack would be like that, it would be the best xpack ever made. Now sure about SL. Don't see any improvements vs BFA. But at least may be story won't be so bad and future patches will be better. So I rate it higher in advance.

[Sunslayer]

Here is my 2 cents. BfA is hot trash. Class design is at it's lowest point. In WoD I played a shit load. I loved the gameplay. I played all of my alts to 1800-2300 arena and RBGs. I enjoyed playing the game then.
I enjoyed earning my mounts I enjoyed earning mountains of gold. I enjoyed just playing WoW.
Fast forward to BfA. The class design is straight garbage. I enjoy nothing.