I think it’s more that it was the first “bad” expansion; yet, since then, we’ve had expansions that were worse by nearly every metric, so it doesn’t look as bad with perspective.
I truly loved every zone in Outlands.
NOOOO Why must you ruin my past!
Actually, what most people point out is that a lot of what paved the way for Cata to be the crap it was came with the 2 last big content patches of WotLK, and that also explains why WoW peaked in WotLK not AFTER IT.
I didn’t play Vanilla so…
Best Community: TBC
Best Raid experience: Wrath
Best Dungeon experience: Cata
Best PvP experience: MoP
Best Gold making experience: WoD
Best Single player experience: Legion
Best…um reason to take a break: BfA
Best reason to take another even longer break: Shadowlands
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In my subjective listing I’d swap MoP and Dragonflight positions but the rest of it seems about on point.
Going to expand on my reasons for each:
Vanilla - Again, major nostalgia, the first of the what was to come and an all around storied RPG with a lot of story/lore from the RTS games.
Wrath - The height of Alliance power under Varian, the climactic conclusion to Arthas/Lich King and some of the best raids I ever got to do. First introduction of a hero class, Death Knight, all around enjoyable especially with Wintergrasp being the first of its kind in WPvP.
Cata - Revamped world is the major defining factor. Many of the zones updated and progressed following years of dereliction. Carried local stories and majorly built upon the war between the Horde and the Alliance. Was by far the most World of WARcraft expansions.
BC - The first expansion, fighting Illidan, YOU ARE NOT PREPARED, overall wonderful zones with the exception of Hellfire (was a warzone in many many ways)
Legion - Didn’t play it on release, but I enjoyed a lot of the features at the end of the expansion. Lots of progress done for Illidan, Demon Hunters another hero class release.
MoP - Was impartial to it. Became indifferent as the story went on. WoD announcement ended up making me quit during this expansion.
WoD - Only thing I liked about it was the Garrisons
BfA - Enjoyed the initial war between the Horde and Alliance, but then it got incoherent and quit roughly around the first major patch
SL - I got this for free since Blizz was trying to get people to come back for DF. Didn’t play it a whole lot, but at the end of the expansion, a lot of Blizzards crappiest practices were in place (timegating/wasting, quests designed to be painstaking long for no reason, pathfinder…)
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Yeah.
The Cataclysmic gladiator set for pallys is probably still one of the best plate sets they’ve made.
And the warrior one looks great with the mage tower prot shield and flail.
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Warlords of Draenor
Dragonflight
Legion
Mists of Pandaria
Burning Crusade
Wrath of the Lich King
Battle for Azeroth
Cataclysm
Shadowlands
By the end of DF I’d be surprised to not see it down at the bottom honestly. Let’s hope I am wrong.
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Best PVP pandaland, I agree, if I hadn’t quit wow on pandaland announcement then I would do that every single day until WoD.
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DF has potential to edge out SL and BfA still but too much ground to make up on anything else.
IMO only reason Cata was “bad” was:
-
The Lich King is the best story ever told by this company. Way too epic, over a decade in development, and impossible to follow. Anything that was coming after Wrath was going to be measured against the Lich King. It was destined to “fail” from the get go.
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Dragon Soul, and by extension Deathwing (the fight) was absolutely disappointing as an encounter. Especially in comparison with ICC. It was a total let down.
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I prefer playing solo and Legion was a dream come true with all the different class quest lines. Was really fun for me… unlike the last 2 expansions and now Dragonflight.
Also agree on your take regarding bfa and sl 
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OOF I agree. Im surprised I don’t see it more often. I still use it often.
What about Dragonflight so far?
Wrath
MoP
Legion
TBC
Cata
BFA
WoD
SL
I tend not to think of Vanilla as an ‘expansion’ but as the base game. however, if I did, it would have to be on top due purely to it’s sheer breadth of content, even as clunky and unpolished as it was at the time.
DF is enjoyable for the simple fact that it is not BfA/SL. And that’s okay. We can fly early on, no incoherent story though it is simple at the moment (which is fine), and everything is digestible as you want it to be.
The rep grind is modest compared to old rep grinds and rather quick in comparison. There are a lot of pros and few cons.
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Sourced by people who never made it to max level.
It’s like elden ring reviews by people who got slammed by margit
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I think it was a good time to quit wow after 3 good expansions since it became kinda ridiculous with the lore, Jesus Thrall??? Also, they announced kung fu pandas were coming… So for me, it was bye-bye WoW, then came back for Legion because Iliidan and demons are cool, found everything else was good again, had to leave at the end of Legion because Humans vs Orcs was kinda old story, nothing new for me, and now I came back because Dragons are cool, hopefully it could be as good as Legion.