What expansion "ending" is your favorite?

[Doffen]

None gonna say Eye of Sau, eh, Nzoth?

For me, Legion followed by TBC. I have always loved the greater scheme in WoW. Faction war got boring in vanilla.

About that sword though. Anyone? Next expansion maybe? 5 more years? The ending was epic. The events that unfolded however...

[Rexosaurus]

I'd probably throw my hat in WotLK's corner.

While I thought that the expansion in general handled the Scourge/Lich King pretty poorly (with a few exceptions), the final cutscene was surprisingly pretty good. They had "Invincible" playing, so along with the dialogue, it all felt like a very final and melancholic end to Arthas' story. Bringing Terenas into it was also a good way to bring us back to his speech during the intro cinematic about Arthas' birthright to be a king, as well.

IMO, it's the only good ending to an expansion. But to each their own and all that.

[Maljinwo]

MoP

No way around it

[Depakote]

Without Ruby Sanctum, a tacked on raid nobody needed, it'd be Wrath, hands down. With it however I'd go with Mists. It brought Garrosh's story to a nice close (if you just forget WoD existed) and the raid on Orgrimmar was on a scale not seen before in the game (sure, we stormed Undercity before, but while that quest was great back then, it can't compare).
If I think about Cata's ending the only thing coming to mind is Deathwing going *plop* at the end of the battle. To this day I don't understand how anyone at Blizzard thought this was a worthy ending.
Regarding TBC, similar to Wrath Sunwell felt tacked on after most of the story took place in Outland and the less that is said about WoD and BfA's endings the better.

P.s. almost forgot Legion. While the expansion as a whole was great, I felt the ending was a bit lackluster and rushed.

Ruby Sanctum opens the story into Cataclysm.

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Given that the OP was referring to a cinematic which was not an ending to an expansion I'd rather take their question at face value.

no. I can give a response even if theirs was maybe a bit off.

[justandulas]

No King rules forever

[starstationprofm]

Legion. Velen sighing in relief as his people are finally safe after 25,000 years of fleeing the Legion was perfect.

That's like... the most loaded sigh of relief in the history of sighs.

[Doffen]

Legion. Velen sighing in relief as his people are finally safe after 25,000 years of fleeing the Legion was perfect.

That's like... the most loaded sigh of relief in the history of sighs.

Rumours has it, they still hear the relief in the Twisting Nether.

[mickybrighteyes]

The ending of Cataclysm, where you see all the various factions celebrating and cheering over Deathwing's defeat - followed by the transition into the more grounded, light-hearted expansion that was MoP - was pretty nice imo

I'm not sure I'd call MoP light hearted what with the faction war theme and sha. Yeah the Jade Forest and farm were light, cute even.... but then we get in and start bringing war into the mess.


On topic. Wrath. It was the only one so far that seemed to have a good conclusion to the overall story and made sense while TRYING to tell it. Vanilla was closed lip about the story for the most part due to how they got around to telling parts. TBC was a clusterfuck lore wise, Cata was alright but a bit of timeywimey shenanigans is poor form imo. MoP was fantastic for it's continuation but fell flat with SoO's end.... there was nothing for awhile, a void of nothing... and then the legion invaded for a shitty mess of plot holes and set up for stuff we thought would happen and were told it wasn't.... but it did anyways....

[Athorha]

Vanilla where you get duped into allowing the big bad to come back.

Wods ending was the only redeeming quality for overall story development that expac so id go with it.

[Daronokk]

I'm not sure I'd call MoP light hearted what with the faction war theme and sha. Yeah the Jade Forest and farm were light, cute even.... but then we get in and start bringing war into the mess.

As opposed to any other expansion that has war in all of their zones? You really think MoP isn't lighthearted in that comparison? You must've played a different game then.

[Triceron]

Hmm. To be honest I never really cared for expansion endings since there was always the exciting announcements of new expansions to fawn over. Usually there'd be plenty of datamined news to look forward to and distract you from whatever ending an expansion offered, the endings always felt like a transition towards new material anyways.

I did like MOP's conclusion though, and I remember fondly how hotly debated the next Warchief was until it happened. It's just sad that so many people vocally hated MoP throughout its duration, and sought out WoD as some saviour of WoW that would bring it back to its roots.

[kranur]

Legion and Cata as they actually had an ending ... that wasn't lame .. like WoD or BfA. WotLK would have also been awesome but the single line "there must always be a lich king" ruined it.

[sam86]

Wrath probably had the most satisfying ending, I think. It concluded the arc of a major character, left some mystery of what was to come, and gave us the feeling that we just saved the world and were Big God Damn Heroes in a way that didn't feel forced.

it helped a lot that LK 1 shot us, and show that we are only alive because he was playing around and not serious
it was also first time they use deus ex machina to save us, we won against biggest threat azeroth faced ever since 2001
we won, but if it get repeated we may easily lose to someone that powerful as LK

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Legion and Cata as they actually had an ending ... that wasn't lame .. like WoD or BfA. WotLK would have also been awesome but the single line "there must always be a lich king" ruined it.

did u know about (proved wrong sadly) theory that Nerzhul tricked us to stay alive faking need of LK or not? that theory made it awesome imo, specially since Bolvar voice change over time in that cinematic
of course it was proven wrong later but for a while it was great

[Mehrunes]

It's a hard choice. Not because there are so many amazing contenders though. Just the opposite, it's because the already-subpar (or, in later expansions, already shit) writing gets even worse during the conclusion of each expac. I'll have to go with TBC as it's least offensive, though it still has weird romance between Kalec and the Sunwell's avatar, the beginning of the castration of the Blood Elves and, ultimately, us achieving very little.

But it's still better than:
1. ThErE mUsT aLwAyS bE a LiCh KiNg. Ner'zhul gets blasted with a spell from another continent? Half of the Scourge forces in Lordaeron break away. Arthas gets hit with a holy sword? The Ebon Blade breaks free, even lowly skeletons manning Acherus. The Lich King fucking dies? It's EVEN GREATER THREAT o'clock time. Never mind that the person responsible for resurrecting the Scourge (that we otherwise kept bombing the hell out of since 3.0) ad nauseum was gone. Never mind that there was no reason for Bolvar not to march the remaining Scourge forces into a goddamn volcano. Then came SL pre-patch and that EVEN GREATER THREAT got steamrolled by us before we even walked into the Maw. And even then the Mawsworn needed to take control of the Scourge first.

2. Around 50 deus ex machinas stacked on top of each other for us to defeat Deathwing, who got even more retarded after 4.0 already turned him into a drooling moron. And we had very new and refreshing third AGE OF MORTALS, for which the Aspects had to be sacrificed on an altar. And the story had to revolve around Metzen's prime self-insert because of course it did.

3. Blizzard forcing lol-wisdom about how both factions should hold hands and sing kumbaya together down the player's throats. Most Horde races having laughable reasons to rebel. Vol'jin becoming the Warchief because of the rebellion he got carried through by the player and other characters while he spent most of that lying in a hospital bed in the middle of nowhere, because he managed to get backstabed from the front. Varian inadvertently saving Garrosh because he had the mental development of a particularly handicapped rock. Moron'zhu hurr durring about how no one suffered more than the Pandaren because Garrosh turned a third of one zone Sha-infested. Specifically, the zone that the August Celestials kept locked for millennia, even to the Pandaren. And they opened only because we convinced them to. Meanwhile Jaina had her city nuked.

Cue in the second worst WoW book ever that made a complete mockery of the law (though Vereesa forgetting her own children and Baine trying to claim he's not an Alliance bootlicker were nice comedic moments) culminating with the grand reveal that the Celestials made up their mind before the trial even began and that the trial was actually for everyone else than Garrosh because lol-wisdom.

4. Draenor is free. The AU premise kept being pretty much unexplored to the very end. The whole expansion served as a vehicle to get us a new Gul'dan to start a new Legion invasion, because getting some demon commander for that was apparently too logical.

5. Kerrilldank becoming the Chosen One by serving as the holy Jailer of Sargeras after Blizzard tried to pretend they are averting it when he rejected Xe'ra's gift. Sargeras stabbing the world and nothing significant happening. The end boss being a completely new random Titan instead of Sargeras.

6. I mean, it's BfA. The whole thing was a joke. The ending even more so, thanks to the kamehameha solution that cheapened the hell out of everything. Also Ny'alotha ended up being the 20th secret layer on top of Azeroth instead of an actual place because of course it did.

[Orby]

Vanilla and TBC really had no 'ending' as such.... which sucked.

MoP was pretty good, and so was Legion. I would say WoTLK but I do remember people shitting on that ending back in the day,. its become more loved over time though. But the 'Always must be a Lich King' thing does still urk me personally.

so its a tie between MoP and Legion.

[roboscorcher]

Legion's ending was pretty good, just like all the other cinematics from that xpac.

I do wish Illidan had been more...Illidan-y. Here's how I'd do it:

The titans are awaken, but refuse to save Azeroth. Everyone leaves dejected, but Illidan jumps ship just before takeoff.

"I didn't come all this way for nothing."

He leaps to the center of the Pantheon and touches the floor, leeching the Titans. Crackling with their power, he grows to an immense size and flies toward Azeroth. As Sargeras plunges the sword into the planet, Illidan stabs him from behind. He pulls the Titan back to the Pantheon as his unstable power escapes. Sargeras returns to his throne, Illidan crashlands in the center of the Pantheon.

Cut back to the sword in the planet.

[mickybrighteyes]

As opposed to any other expansion that has war in all of their zones? You really think MoP isn't lighthearted in that comparison? You must've played a different game then.

MoP's intro was bombing theramore and lead up to such fiascos as the horde getting an SS birgade that put people on placards for target practice....

Yeah i'm calling that dark.

To put some perspective... BFA was the one that topped it for a dark intro because teldrassil. Hell, jade forest intro for both sides was an air support strafing that would almost require a Fortunate Son cover as you merk hundreds of fools who pop up on the crosshairs.

Yes fat people that like food and drink alot was a major comic relief between teh events of rallying war among the peaceful plebs who didn't know any better and staving off the mindless swarms that would murder everything in their wake while we danced upon the whims of a long dead god of terrible destruction... MoP was a weird time.

[guisadop]

MoP, hands down.

WotLK I was really hyped about, but it didn't quite live up to the hype

[Varodoc]

That was the interesting part though. I hope we'll see Draenor one day in a full-on orc vs draenei war.

Sure, it's interesting, until you realize that they turned Yrel into a villain while giving Grommash a redeeming death.

[Ivarr]

Sure, it's interesting, until you realize that they turned Yrel into a villain while giving Grommash a redeeming death.

That's an interesting flip, it fits with the zealotry of the Naaru. Grommash has always been consistently his own dog.