Loved WotLK. I tanked the hell outta them instances. My SO was still playing (heals) and we still laugh about the “healing you is boring” situation. Ah, good times good times. Bear dps was good too and could easily make up for a bad dps so I always had fun.
Then the c/d on swipe was implemented which was one of the worst things to happen ever and ruined a lot of my enjoyment. >:[
I liked the original trees far more than any since, even the current ones. As for being “scalable”, anything can scale because it’s a game.
So my favorite time playing with a guild was TBC, my favorite from a gameplay perspective could be legion though.
For me, it was MoP. Been playing since '06, and played consistently, but something about Pandaria really hit me more than at any other time. Sure, I have a bit of nostalgia about classic, tbc, wrath, and even cata. But MoP is definitely my favorite era.
My favourite era of WoW was when I had real life friends playing the game 
The current one because of Follower Dungeons, Delves and Story Mode Raids.
I feel ya. My RL friends all stopped playing too. But there’s still plenty of cool people to meet. It’s just a matter of finding the right people 
Follower dungeons sound like it helps with queue times. And you don’t have to speed through dungeons, you can go at your own pace.
I haven’t tried Delves, but they look interesting. And I didn’t know they had Story Mode Raids :o
No, the original trees weren’t scalable. When you have to constantly add onto the end to justify adding new stuff, they don’t work.
Imagine they had never done a level squish and what those would look like now? Oof.
This one.
… sadly that’s as precise as I can be. Because I don’t derive my enjoyment of the game from any one particular thing, and when I don’t enjoy the game as much as I have done in the past I simply play less of it.
So whatever era that the game is in, I always find that the most fun. Because being nostalgic isn’t for me. I prefer to have fun in the now, so… that’s why my favourite era of anything will always be some synonym of “this one.”
TBC. There was just so much hype. Things had some sort of difficulty and the Horde got blood elves so weren’t a smelly boy fest anymore lol. Not to mention Horde Paladins were a big deal.
Places like the undercity were actually utilized. I knew everyone wherever I went. Our server was small and it had such a community feel. I played the hell out of that expansion and had so much fun again in TBC classic. Was never a wrath fan, think that really steered the game in a different direction.
2004-2006 was peak WoW and it’s been a decline ever since. A slow decline fortunately but a decline nevertheless.
I mean you can have fun in the moment while being aware that you’ve had even more fun in other moments. It doesn’t necessarily detract from the fun you’re having now.
Unless realizing that would cause some kind of house of cards effect for your current enjoyment. Which is probably not nostalgia’s fault but denial’s fault.
Vanilla WoW was the best in its time.
Too bad it’s not as good in 2025.
I’m not sure if I could pick a favourite era, because currently WoW has never been more social for me than BfA to present day.
I also grew up with WoW so it’s hard to look back and feel nostalgia and not think, “Was X expansion better, or was I just younger and more excited about things?”
A trait that vanilla shares with retail right there.
Cata was awful but I met my wife farming in twilight highlands.
Legion was the maturity xpack, and it shut the major Warcraft door. My most /played time after LK.
Wrath.
I tried wrath classic and idk it wasnt the same. It was fun but the community is way different than way back when.
That’s because the classic community and the retail community are just the same people on different days.
Kind of like how the raid community, the M+ community, and the delve community are just the same people on different days.
Yeah. People are min maxing to the extreme and speeding through content as fast as they can now. I remember back during 2010 the majority of people on my server were all about having fun. We would raid Stormwind for almost no reason other than to get into shenanigans.
Two times I distinctly remember having the most fun with WoW.
WotLK and Legion.
The lore and game play I enjoyed the most.
The time between Cata through Pandaria before timeless isles came out was the time I enjoyed wow the most. The content in the expansions I enjoyed, and I wasn’t really good enough to exhaust much of the content quickly.