Which expansion was the absolute worst?

[BigZik]

I didn't like WoD because there was so little to do, but what actually was there, was somewhat decent.

I really dislike BFA though. Gearing is a mess. Every patch a new system gets added on top of a system already in place. I just dislike the concept of titanforging, warforging, corruptions and other types of randomness to gear. You get showered with loot, but it never feels good, because it always could have been better.

Also all the random procs in BFA are such a big part of your overall output that it feels to me like they are taking power away from the decisions I'm actively making as a player.

I'm excited to see many of these issues I have being adressed in some capacity, but I'm afraid some of the new systems in Shadowlands might take away some of my enjoyment of the game. I guess we'll have to see how things will work out in Shadowlands.

[chaoticcrono]

I'd take wod over bfa any day

[Gestopft]

Early Cata was the worst imo. Group content was the most punishing as a baseline (although I'd love to see some of those dungeons in M+), healers felt awful to play, and a lot of the effort was in the world revamp. Later patches made it better, although DS was a 'meh' raid.

I might otherwise say early WOD when there was a lack of endgame content, but a) I had a newborn at the time, and b) it gave me a chance to get all of my alts and their garrisons set up early, so the lack of content didn't bother me personally. I imagine it would've been painful to people who only stick with 1-3 toons.

[MrFawlty]

Your logic would be valid if that were the only thing that had changed. But you are making the classic error of confusing correlation with causation. As I explained, and as apparently went over your head, the inference you are trying to draw makes no sense. Go back and read for comprehension, mkay?

Aha the correlation and causation argument I was waiting for that. Always good to use it when someone points out that all evidence suggests the opposite of what you are saying.

Let’s for a moment consider your suggestion - The game grew in spite of having a system that doesn’t work, it reached some so a "saturation point" even though "a HUGE population of MMO newbies crowding in to see what all the fuss was about" who "churned right back out again". Then the game was changed to retain players who were already playing the previous system under which the game had continually grown.

You have one thing in your favour at least, no one can use the correlation and causation argument against that.

[Osmeric]

Aha the correlation and causation argument I was waiting for that. Always good to use it when someone points out that all evidence suggests the opposite of what you are saying.

But "all evidence" doesn't do that. You have cherry picked a particular change, and claimed that change, and only that change, is the cause.

Let’s for a moment consider your suggestion - The game grew in spite of having a system that doesn’t work, it reached some so a "saturation point" even though "a HUGE population of MMO newbies crowding in to see what all the fuss was about" who "churned right back out again". Then the game was changed to retain players who were already playing the previous system under which the game had continually grown.

My theory is entirely plausible. What would bring players in was word of mouth from people who were experiencing the blush of their first MMO, telling their friends about it and encouraging them to see it too. WoW was the first MMO with casual-friendly leveling, in a situation where people had just gotten enough high speed internet access to make it work. Word-of-mouth was an exponential process that caused an explosion of interest.

But like any exponential process, it eventually saturated. Eventually, everyone or nearly everyone who would be brought in had been, and had had that initial wonderful phase, when just playing solo running around Elwynn Forest with the oboe music playing was a reward, and moved beyond it. Moving from solo to group play was a barrier. Actually playing their characters well was a barrier. Optimizing their play so they would not have fallen behind, so as not to be excluded, another barrier. The network effects that made word-of-mouth work would now be a negative, as friends bailed. At this point, the game was not holding on to players. There's a reason the devs kept tweaking things, and it wasn't because everything was rosy.

[Mutley29]

Warlords will always be the worst.

[cozzri]

Warlords will always be the worst.

A whole expansion just used as an excuse to bring Gul’dan back. He’s the only character I can thing of that came through to the normal universe; with the exception of Mag’har allied race. Lore wise it’s just terrible because nothing you did there even matters; I hate having to go level up in WoD zones/dungeons.

[Mutley29]

A whole expansion just used as an excuse to bring Gul’dan back. He’s the only character I can thing of that came through to the normal universe; with the exception of Mag’har allied race. Lore wise it’s just terrible because nothing you did there even matters; I hate having to go level up in WoD zones/dungeons.

I must admit i love leveling up in Warlords cause that garrison pot and those WQ are SO OP but that whole expac was just terrible. Like you said nothing mattered and it really was just an excuse to get Gul'dan back who was quickly dispatched in a mid tier raid in Legion.

Warlords couldve been great but Blizz clearly gave up on it and it showed. 6.2 was a fucking disgrace and it had the illusion of content but if you peeled it away it had no content just content that shouldve been released at launch like Taanan, A raid we all knew that was coming that was OK i guess and Timewalking which was a lazy way to give us content by tweaking the HP and DMG of old dungeons we got bored of years ago!

[Krimzin]

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

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

Who cares. Why do people wanna keep rehashing the past.
Do you sit around and think, wonder who the ugliest girl I ever got naked with was? No.. because we do our best to forget that one drunken night. It was horrible, move on.
Same goes for expansions, who cares.. just forget about it and move on. There is nothing you can do to change it and talking about it does nothing.

[MrFawlty]

But "all evidence" doesn't do that. You have cherry picked a particular change, and claimed that change, and only that change, is the cause.



My theory is entirely plausible. What would bring players in was word of mouth from people who were experiencing the blush of their first MMO, telling their friends about it and encouraging them to see it too. WoW was the first MMO with casual-friendly leveling, in a situation where people had just gotten enough high speed internet access to make it work. Word-of-mouth was an exponential process that caused an explosion of interest.

But like any exponential process, it eventually saturated. Eventually, everyone or nearly everyone who would be brought in had been, and had had that initial wonderful phase, when just playing solo running around Elwynn Forest with the oboe music playing was a reward, and moved beyond it. Moving from solo to group play was a barrier. Actually playing their characters well was a barrier. Optimizing their play so they would not have fallen behind, so as not to be excluded, another barrier. The network effects that made word-of-mouth work would now be a negative, as friends bailed. At this point, the game was not holding on to players. There's a reason the devs kept tweaking things, and it wasn't because everything was rosy.

Whilst any theory is plausible and I sure for some what you say undoubtably is true, the overall growth coincided with the elitism model and its stalling and decline with a more assessable approach. I personally believe Blizzard got greedy and tried to make a game to appeal to everyone and that didn’t work but I have no evidence to back that up. They still made a hell of a lot of money and who knows increasing its assess ability was the long term best solution but I doubt it. Ever since they have removed the "barriers" you mention they have found it far more difficult to hold onto subscriptions as more and more casual gamers complete the current patch and bugger off until the next.

If anyone is cherry picking it is you, you have in this discussion and countless times over the years cited the subs reduction in Cata as proof (the only thing that happened that matches what you say which I concede is true) and built your entire theory around it making excuses for all other evidence that doesn’t suit your narrative.

[Accendor]

It had ONE redeeming feature. Raids. Everything else about the expansion was either absolute trash or mindless. I disagree that everything about BfA was bad. It wasn't a particularly GOOD expansion but it was still far better than Warlords of Removed Content.

You can really discuss if BfA had good raids.
A lof of people did not like Uldir in general. BoD is most likely the worst raid in WoWs history in all aspects. Eternal Palace was great with just minor issues, while Crucible of Storms was only done by so few people that it will go down as the raid with the lowest player participation ever. Ny'alotah had some great bosses, but also a lot of very, very terrible and frustrating bosses and the most anti climatic final boss fight in WoWs history.

I don't know man, most of the raids were fine, but they were not and definitely not better than WoD.

[TheRevenantHero]

You can really discuss if BfA had good raids.
A lof of people did not like Uldir in general. BoD is most likely the worst raid in WoWs history in all aspects. Eternal Palace was great with just minor issues, while Crucible of Storms was only done by so few people that it will go down as the raid with the lowest player participation ever. Ny'alotah had some great bosses, but also a lot of very, very terrible and frustrating bosses and the most anti climatic final boss fight in WoWs history.

I don't know man, most of the raids were fine, but they were not and definitely not better than WoD.

I never said the raids in BfA were better. I was referring to WoD when I said the one redeeming quality was raids. Nothing else in the expansion was even "ok". Everything else was fiery garbage.

[Lastgope]

Laughed at seeing people complain about MoP because of "Pandas"

I would have thought everyone that had that sentiment would grow up by now.

Especially since the response to MoP complaints was the "edgy, savage, try-hard" shitstorm that was WoD.

[oblakoff]

WoD aesthetics were 101% better than the "wholesome" MoP in the world of warcraft

[Cæli]

in terms of design, bfa might be the worst with time gated rng
in terms of atmosphere, wod might be the worst, it's the first that has really non warcraft-y design, it could have been a cheap mmo like there's dozens...it's like if they hired new artists at this time. and I believe it's actually that. it shows, wow was never really the same since then in terms of music/atmosphere.

[Lastgope]

WoD aesthetics were 101% better than the "wholesome" MoP in the world of warcraft

Only if you at things very surface level

[oblakoff]

Or not into April fool's jokes making it into expansion just to cater to furries and China market

[Holymaneli]

BFA by a large margin in my opinion.

WOD migh have had a bit of a content drought but raiding wise was excellent at least, as I was raiding back then.
BFA's corruption system can't die soon enough. HORRIBLE game design.

[Aphrel]

i love how so many comments say "wod was raid or die, nothing to do outside" yet that was exactly how wotlk was aswell, only in wotlk we had limited attempts in raid so it was more like "raid one day of the week then do nothing" type of deal. Also we had a reused raid from vanilla thrown in to cover the first raidteir...

I feel like most ppl in this thread only votes based on gut feeling or emotions. Wich makes the poll about as useful as if it was a question about whether green, blue or yellow is the prettiest colour.

What we should do is judge the individual features of each expansion and rank them, thus creating a metascore for each expansion.
Features such as: Leveling, dungeons content, raid content, class gameplay, pvp gameplay, expansion unique features (etc scenarios, wintergrasp, garrisions, legendarys and so on)

[Accendor]

WoD aesthetics were 101% better than the "wholesome" MoP in the world of warcraft

Did... Did you actually play MoP?

I have no idea why you would even think MoP was "wholesome". I can see how Valley of the four winds is generally a bit more light hearted, but the rest?
As alliance you literally start the expansion on a gnome plane, that took flight from an air carrier, and you kill half an orc base with machine gun fire, before you sink two warships with ground/air rockts. You then recruit a local tribe, equip them with weapons and train them for combat. While you are doing this, a secret military unit is looking for the missing prince. During their search one of them kills small animals for fun amd executes dozens of Orcs and Hozen with headshots through a sniper rifle, before another one uses explosives to burn down a whole village. In the end they meet a witch that turns people into statues, a curse, that can not be broken, even with her death. She also randomly kills a small animal. The whole zone continues that way, until we get access to the temple of the jade serpent, where we make friends with wise Mari, Lorewalker Stonestep and Liu Flameheart. However, the next time we turn to the temple, it is because all of our friends fell to the corruption of the Sha THAT WE CAUSED and our only choice is to kill them all. That is the zone finale.

How is any of that "wholesome"? And I haven't even talked about the zones that actually have a dark storyline