Really…?
Source: Trust me.
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BC > Legion > Wrath > SL = Mists > Cata > WoD > BfA = DF
(on reconsideration, I was going too easy on BfA, and changed it to be tied for the bottom spot, instead of giving the bottom solely to DF)
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SL = Mists ???
In what universe?
to be honest i do not think wrath was that good , pretty boring outside ulduar and the lich king .
It’s interesting because they’re so different.
The only thing Mists really got right was that it delivered complete - and different - Horde & Alliance experiences, something sorely missing from the game these days. The class design & gameplay was poor, and Timeless Isle was a trainwreck that still haunts the game to this day, since it eliminated the “rares with a 100% drop rate on what you want” and replaced it with “rares that take hours to spawn but only drop what you want 1% of the time”.
Shadowlands had a ton of problems - largely covenants, but also the elimination of the Horde while focusing entirely on Alliance characters. But the aesthetics for Revendreth and the Maw were great, to me. The gameplay was good, the Maw was fun when played in a group, Torghast was alright but very short (got way better with the Box) and hit the collectibles note just about right. (As opposed to DF, where one of the biggest flaws is that it drowns a collector in sewage.)
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Wrath was mid.
Legion was the genesis of the “spend half to 2/3s of the expansion fixing it, then it’s good” thing, which lasted through SL.
Fair. I still rank it 3rd because… well, what was better? 
It didn’t do anything spectacularly right, but it also didn’t do anytime spectacularly wrong (other than the tuning on naxx 10/25).
As far as what’s better, so far Cata has been for me.
Almost every expansion after Cata has done at least 1 thing to majorly shoot itself in the foot, which complicates things:
MoP: overabundance of daily quests
WoD: nothing extra to do even if you wanted too, lasted too long
Legion: AP, Legendaries, the introduction of infinite gear grinding, Titanforing
BFA: Class design, AP, infinite gear grinding, essences/corruption (until they fixed it 2/3 of the way through 8.3), Titanforging (although they did finally remove it in 8.3)
SL: covenant locks, Torghast being mandatory, Legendaries, more infinite gear grinding
DF: infinite gear grinding.
Gotcha.
Cata’s highs weren’t very high, for me, just nothing to get excited about. And it had a lot of lows.
Thrall’s wedding being the lowest, of course.
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I wonder if my opinion on cata will change when we get to dragon soul in classic, but T11’s been better than anything in Wrath, and I expect Firelands to be better still.
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Yes, TWW looks to be rather epic.
Speak for yourself. I loved Legion from the git go.
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Consider who the lead devs were for WoW’s best expansions. I bet you too will notice a trend …
Both were story crescendos.
Wrath was the end of the original ‘trilogy’ and the end of the best villian they’ve set up.
Legion brought back the OG warcraft 3 threat and beautifully ended that arc, juxtaposed with a massive upgrade of systems from WoD that opened up the game again. (It’s also the GOAT)
It can be done, they just need to build correctly to it. Dragonflight wasn’t an expansion that convinced me to play enough, but imo, it put them on the correct path for another story build up to have an acclaimed expac. My guess is Midnight or Last Titan will be, probably the latter.
Wrath was wildly overrated. It was popular due to the introduction of RDF, and dungeons that were fantastically easy to clear, with relatively forgiving raids. It was an attempt to appeal to the lowest common denominator, and led to the spiral that wow has been trapped in for over 15 years now.
Significantly more people got to experience end game content, more people got purples. And they suddenly expected both to fall into their laps. Any time blizzard tried to bump the difficulty back up to normal levels, the community would suddenly lose their minds(cata heroics being the first example), and blizzard would have to pull back.
Most recent example of that phenomenon, is their attempt to get pseudo cheat mods out of PvE. Raiders lose their mind that their weak auras couldn’t just run the encounter for them, and now they seem to be backing away from a good change to the game.
Legion was okay, artifact power just needed to be a finite grind per “phase” without catch ups, instead of an infinite grind where the only winning move was to wait for the catch up.
It’s main good change though was mythic plus, an end game pillar that didn’t require 5 people to herd 5-15 cats for challenging content.
I was being glib, but my genuine take is that every expansion after Wrath, except for WoD and Shadowlands, is better than Wrath.
What if my list was the same as yours? Wouldn’t that create a paradox?
Like the Frost Dwarves being part of The Alliance ever since Muradin; as Yorg Stormheart; brought them into The Alliance during Wrath.
And we still can’t play as them. We don’t even have customizations for them yet.
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So one of your takes is BfA > WotLK?
Wow. I can’t imagine having that take when BfA was so strapped and timegated.
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You forgot about Legiondaries, where your performance was directly tied to picking up a good legendary from random mobs you kill. I was blessed with BiS first drop but others went the entire expansion without a good legendary until Blizz pulled the ripcord to allow people to grind to get a “acquire random lego for your spec” tokens.