What would you say is the most enjoyable of the 3: BFA, SL, or WoD?

[Neuroticaine]

I had very little love for Warlords or BFA. Shadowlands in has been solidly middle of the pack for me.

[GMZohar1]

WoD is the worst and its not even close... Someone made a video talking about "was WoD really that bad?" and everyone watched it and got influenced by it, but don't let that video fool you. WoD is by far the worst

[Soon-TM]

Even though SL is the first xpac that I’ve officially unsubbed, it’s more due to a culmination of poor design choices over the years rather than those specific to an xpac.

People picking WoD cant be thinking rationally, if you didn’t raid you didn’t do jack shit. That might be better to you, but how can you objectively place it higher than the other two?

I dislike current WoW as much as many of you, but come on, at least there’s things to dislike and like about it.

Look at it this way: if WoD hadn't been thrown under the bus and had got a proper development cycle, it would have been at least decent.

Contrariwise, BfA first and SL now are ostensibly packed with things to do, be it warfronts/islands/visions in BfA or callings/Choreghast/Korthia in SL, aside from the omnipresent Greater Rifts M+.

The issue, at least in my case, is that all of that content wasn't/isn't even remotely interesting, but you have to do it anyway if you don't want to be a dead weight in the part of the game that is actually interesting. I'm fed up with World of Chorecraft.

[DechCJC]

Look at it this way: if WoD hadn't been thrown under the bus and had got a proper development cycle, it would have been at least decent.

Contrariwise, BfA first and SL now are ostensibly packed with things to do, be it warfronts/islands/visions in BfA or callings/Choreghast/Korthia in SL, aside from the omnipresent Greater Rifts M+.

The issue, at least in my case, is that all of that content wasn't/isn't even remotely interesting, but you have to do it anyway if you don't want to be a dead weight in the part of the game that is actually interesting. I'm fed up with World of Chorecraft.

I suppose that's a reasonable enough point, fair enough.

[Kalisandra]

It's just the wow cycle everyone can calm down. 3 years ago everyone called legion the worst expansion and now it's considered the 2nd best by majority of players who aren't idiots next to Mop based off content/balance/raids/pvp

You still have people in this game who say TBC/wotlk was the best expansion, let that sink in. WOTLK.... an expansion with literally 0 content once you hit max level outside of raiding and arena. Once you did your weekly raids THAT WAS IT, there was nothing else to do. ICC was utter trash, limited attempts was the worst design in the history of raiding. Yet people call it the best because "BUt Da SUBs WeRE At ItS HigEHST" I loved the lich king fight, who didn't who played WC3/FT still doesn't change the fact it was a shitty expansion BuT ULDUUAARrrRRR.

Give it a couple more years and wod/bfa/sl won't seem so bad. Especially once tbc/wotlk classic is done. I haven't heard anything from the thousands who dictated vanilla was the height of WoW ever since classic ended. Once the spergs and kids get to experience what they claim they did once before, they'll wake up.

WotLK was the best time I ever had in WoW, but I'm well aware that 1) it will never be repeated, because 2) it was the people and the times, not the game itself (aside from Ulduar). I had an amazing time, my guild was fun and participation was really high. It was great.

I will never forgive Cata for killing that. By putting 10 and 25-man raids on the same lockout, the devs put themselves in a position where they had to try to make both equally difficult. As they wanted to retain hard progression fights, and only had the two settings 'normal' and 'hard' and combined with the attempt to make players step up that Cata saw, that put a lot of my guild's enthusiastic but not very skilled players off continuing. Add in the harder heroics, so gearing was a chore for those types, and their enthusiasm fell off pretty fast. WoD & Legion's 'normal' difficulty probably would've been fine for them, but that was far in the future and they were all gone by then. Sure, the guild continued, and we still had a 10-man roster (and 'flex' was such a god-send - we didn't have to sit people, and track who's turn it was and all that), but it really did kill off the social aspect.

To those who say that Vanilla or BC was the best, log into Classic and level a Paladin, and get back to me.

Late Cata did have pretty good class design overall (though I hated the Combustion they had then), pity about Dragon Soul and LFR. MoP's class design was a bit hit or miss early on, but was as good as it's ever been by the end. WoD's was 'okay'. Some classes did well, others not so much - Paladins came in for a really serious ability trim, and they took most of the fun out of Elemental Shamans and it took a while for them to put some of it back. Overall, WoD was okay for me, aside from one thing - there wasn't much outdoor content (especially as gathering was pointless because of the Garrison), and they refused to put flight in. I unsubbed because of that and only resubbed when Tanaan was live and flight confirmed. That was the first time I unsubbed since I'd started playing mid-BC.

I unsubbed again in BfA for a similar reason - delayed flight and a general feeling of hostility towards it.

After I've done levelling on my main, and I've done each daily or WQ multiple times, having to wade through ever-increasing densities of mobs just to do the same content over again is really boring and annoying. Running round on the ground isn't immersive any more, because doing daily chores isn't and immersive activity anyway. Allowing flight at least gives a sense of power and control, and besides, the WoW art team almost always does an amazing job on the world and it look great from altitude. Flying adds a little fun to an otherwise boring round of chores, and yet they seem hell-bent on avoiding allowing it whenever they can.

One reason I mark SL down is how limited flight is, and how they tied it in to their blasted campaign questline, yet again (even though the questline in question is just about all about the Maw and Korthia - where there's no flight). Oh, and this no-flight in the Maw and Korthia - everyone else seems to be able to, friend and foe, so why can't we?

This is why I give Legion a bit of slack - yes, they mucked us about on flight, however when we did get it it worked everywhere (at the time). OF course they then took it away again in Argus, and gave us masses of mobs to try and run around in much of it.

This is part of what is to me the biggest problem with the game from WoD onwards (though Legion didn't feel like this all the time) - a lot of what the devs do feels punitive, like they actually hate the players and want to make the game a punishment. That whole "Fun detected, nerfed" meme.

[draugril]

WoD was a middling entry for me - I appreciated that I felt that I was playing the game on my terms rather than my playstyle being dictated to me through design.

[Kalisandra]

BfA wasn't good as whole but at least had some salvageable ideas and moments. I actually enjoyed 5 mask HV and thought BoD was one of the best raids in recent memory.

I liked BoD, but have a feeling that much of that was because I was maining an Elemental, and they'd just been buffed somewhat ridiculously (every trash pull the RL would be telling me "Don't pull, let the tanks do it", and I'd be saying "I didn't pull, I just got all the aggro"). In terms of the fights it was about the same as Uldir for me (aside from Mythrax - I didn't like that fight at all). I didn't raid past that due to a combination of RL and annoyance with the game, aside from a little in Ny'alotha when it was largely on farm (and it was okay, I guess). Overall I preferred Nighthold, Tomb, and Antorus.

- - - Updated - - -

Bullshit. At the back of WoD most people may have have had complaints about Legion and some of it's systems, but only the utterly lost and clueless would have called it that in the beginning. Towards the end it was clear that BfA was a massive downgrade to legion in all regards for anyone that even vaguely followed the beta testing.

Part of the issue with BfA for me was that even levelling alts was unfun. I don't like redoing quest-lines, yet it was that or chain-running islands, which I liked even less. A lot of the problem was how strong the stat decay was in BfA (and having legendaries turn off half-way through didn't help either). Sure, your good Legion gear wouldn't get replaced until quite late, but that just meant you couldn't counter the stat rot with improved gear, you just got weaker and weaker as you levelled. Yes, that happened in some other expansions as well, but in BfA it was very strong, and when combined with the stripped down (and often outright terrible) class builds BfA had, it was awful.

[dope_danny]

Depends how you mean. Like at the time i think WoD's gameplay held up the best but in the longterm zandalar and kul tiras as locations on the map feel like better additions to the world than outland 0.5 and outland 1.5 respectively. Even without tides of war i think people levelling will treat places like Drustvar or Nazmir like Duskwood or Howling Fjord down the line. Especially with Chromie time reducing the experience to basically diablo 3 adventures where you pick and choose where to go.

[Saiteck]

WoD at the time was the worst people had seen now its much better than what we are having now

[Kalisandra]

The issue, at least in my case, is that all of that content wasn't/isn't even remotely interesting, but you have to do it anyway if you don't want to be a dead weight in the part of the game that is actually interesting. I'm fed up with World of Chorecraft.

It's rather like early MoP, when you had to do all the damned dailies to keep up. At the time I held that you didn't, and heroic and raids were sufficient to keep you geared. I was wrong and by the time I admitted that and bit the bullet I was well behind in gear. I didn't manage to really feel like I was doing my part again until ToT came out and that effectively reset the gear grind.

It's causing a real problem with my guild's numbers, too. Players who have to step away for a bit due to Real Life feel they can't catch up again (true or not), so they just stop playing. What's more, we can't really in good conscience try and get new players or old ones who've drifted away to rejoin by claiming it'll be a great time, because let's face it - aside from dungeons and raids (if they're into them), it probably won't be.

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Depends how you mean. Like at the time i think WoD's gameplay held up the best but in the longterm zandalar and kul tiras as locations on the map feel like better additions to the world than outland 0.5 and outland 1.5 respectively. Even without tides of war i think people levelling will treat places like Drustvar or Nazmir like Duskwood or Howling Fjord down the line. Especially with Chromie time reducing the experience to basically diablo 3 adventures where you pick and choose where to go.

To a point - levelling in WoD was great, so unless they've killed it in the revisions, it'll remain popular for that.

[dope_danny]

To a point - levelling in WoD was great, so unless they've killed it in the revisions, it'll remain popular for that.

To you mean that like "The storys and environments were great" or "you can get to 50 in shadowmoon valley"? because the latter is a severe case of diminishing returns. There was a time where it was better to head to hellfire at 58 rather than quest in azeroths endgame zones but people got sick of fighting felboars and fighting for cannon spawns long before there was an alternative. Nothing kills interest in something for alts like monotony.

Shit just look at the entire mage boosting debacle in wow classic to highlight the extreme of that.

[Shadowferal]

WoD at the time was the worst people had seen now its much better than what we are having now

Proof that shit shines up so much better when it isn't so....fresh.
*laughs maniacally*

[El Gucaragua]

WoD's biggest downfall was Blizzard abandoning the content they had planned for Legion, but it's gameplay loop was still really good and there weren't nearly as many systems that were detrimental to the player experience. If WoD had introduced M+ and not Legion, completely different story.

We definitely need to wait for the end of SL to properly judge these three, but I would think mostly everyone agrees on an objective scale WoD is the better of the three currently.

[Nerovar]

WoD easily. While the content was sparse and mediocre, the game still felt like WoW. A crappy version of WoW, but WoW nonetheless.

This entire borrowed power era has been a dumpster fire. The only reason it's not seen as a complete and utter failure by everyone is because Legion had an absolute ass-ton of content (because they killed off WoD to work on it early). If Legion had the same amount of content as BfA, it too would be seen as a huge failure.

I can't think of any redeeming qualities in the Legion-SL era beyond the cosmetic stuff in Legion. Everything else, from the RNG bullshit to the infinite grinds to the horrible systems design, has been flat-out insulting.

I feel the same way about it. Legion and onward is when the ship of Theseus no longer was the ship of Theseus.

[orgonutil]

Shadowlands becouse, despiste its problems, i can spend a lot of my time and have a lot of fun doing m+ (BFA i could to, but the grind makes me quite the game soon i got the max lvl)

[Geckoo]

To me is a close tie between BfA and WoD. Always considering that both were bad expansions.

BfA was better in terms of variety, but really bad in terms of how much asks from the player. And WoD was the contrary: lack of content, but big on leaving the players enjoy that few content however they wanted. I did have a better time playing WoD mostly because i still had a bunch of guildmates to play with, whereas BfA i mostly played alone and barely did any raiding.

[Naiattavain]

lol i remembered in wod that i killed everyone with my throwing weapons. good for rogue too.

[Thelxi]

lol i remembered in wod that i killed everyone with my throwing weapons. good for rogue too.

Burst of speed baby. Burst of speed. And more of course, like cheat death and vanish and recuperate and cloak all at full power without having to gimp yourself through talent choices and other crap.. but burst of fucking speed.

Many people died at the hands of rogues during WoD, and very few managed to exact revenge.

[Zeons]

This forum is now praising WoD. The hypocrisy is outstanding.

[Shadowferal]

This forum is now praising WoD. The hypocrisy is outstanding.

A lot of those playing today came in during that expansion. They're seeing WoD with a shine that older players see WotLK.