Wow Expansions. Rate them: Best to Worst

Community General Discussion
42

I was probably more positive on legion than I have become. Didn’t start raiding legion until NH though, and that was a really cool raid.

43

Ive gotten a lot more negative the last 6 years if that tells you anything… minus legion, it was pretty good minus a few screw ups on blizz’s end.

44

Mine, from the best to worst

  1. Wrath
  2. WoD
  3. MoP
  4. TBC
  5. Cata
  6. Vanilla
  7. BFA
  8. Legion
  9. SL

The #1 is the time i expend the most in end game, and the first time i raided in current content, with completely random people, there was no excessive, nor time gate, at least not compared to today’s standards, and lore was great.

It’s easier to me to explain what i don’t like, and from 7 to 9 everything feels more like diablo and a grinding casino machine, than ever before. besides the lore went downhill mostly at the end of pandaria. Some good things from those expansions, are the upgraded aesthetics from the og races of wow.

45

Haven’t done any of the classic re-releases so I’m only ranking retail

Tied for First:

  • World of Warcraft (2004) - Because it was new and far better than all others.
  • Wrath of the Lich King (2008) - Story was cool plus a lot of really good quality of life improvements.
  • Mists of Pandaria (2012)

Enjoyable:

  • Cataclysm (2010) - interesting world reset + goblins!

Not bad - not great but a decent ‘time sink’. Not much else to say about these. Never cared for the stories and such so it was just ‘something to do’.

  • Legion (2016)
  • Battle for Azeroth (2018)
  • Shadowlands (2020)

Hated -

  • Burning Crusade (2007) - kind of felt betrayed that they with giving shamans and paladins to both factions. Know it was a balancing decision but it was one of the things that made each faction unique.

  • Warlords of Draenor (2014) - Was tired of the whole Garrosh thing and I dislike ‘time traveling’ stories. This plus … garrisons … shudder.

46

Of the expansions I’ve played (while they were current):

Best:

  1. MoP
  2. Legion

Merely OK:

  1. Cataclysm
  2. WoD

Worst:

  1. Shadowlands
  2. BfA

Things might change when I get the motivation to level through TBC Classic or when WOTLK Classic launches, we’ll see.

47

MoP
…
Legion
WoD
…
…
SL
…
…
…
BFA

Side note, I loved Cata. But I joined WoW officially in 4.3 so, I can’t really give it a fair shake.

48

Hmm…

  1. Wrath

  2. Cata

  3. Legion

  4. Shadowlands

  5. MoP

  6. BC

  7. Classic

  8. WoD

  9. BfA

49

3,5,7,2,4,6,8,1,10

Shadowlands was the only one that made me go “I’m out”

1 Like
50

Legion-Wrath-SL-MoP-BC-Vanilla-BfA-WoD-Cata
Best → Worst

51

Would be interested to see if someone (or blizz) put out a granular rating per major content patch/phase, and then each person have their total account playtimes per each phase/patch posted alongside their rating.

As for me I personally enjoy the latter half of expansions. People cry that legion somehow gets memory-holed referring to how good it was in 7.3 but you have to remember that patch (yes I know antorus/7.3.2/purchaseable random lego tokens and then 7.3.5 came in late Nov and January respectively) was 322 days long. That means it was 47% the duration of legion. Why is it unfair to judge the value of a game based upon nearly half its lifespan?

Same for bfa 8.2+, I loved rank 4 essences and the drive to make me play other content. That patch onwards to the end (8.3) was 60% of bfa’s lifespan. And I loved it.

Just a crying shame blizz tries to create this throttled but glossy honeymoon period each new expansion launch, which then sours peoples views on the whole thing. Just put in the intended QoL at launch and people will stick around. And for legion they did that sort of early by making classes feel good by nighthold and giving us really early flying (last week of March/early April ‘17). Just let people play rather than instilling apathy.

52
  1. WotLK
  2. BC
  3. Cata
  4. Legion
  5. MoP
  6. WoD
  7. SL (thus far)
  8. BfA

WoW was the game itself, so it’s not an expansion.
WoW Classic and BC Classic are separate from retail and not expansions of WoW.
BC Classic is the best Classic xpak thus far.

53
  1. Vanilla
  2. WotLK
  3. Cara
  4. Pandaria
  5. BFA
  6. Shadowlands
  7. Legion
    .
    .
    .
    Way Last: WOD
54

You are joking right? you rated BFA and SL above Legion?

55
  1. WotLK
  2. Pandaria
  3. Legion
  4. BC
  5. Cata
  6. Vanilla
  7. SL
  8. WOD
  9. BFA
56

Pandaland
Legion
Wrath
(the rest except for the following in no real order)
BFA
and finally… way at the bottom -

SL which is so convoluted with systems and currencies I spend more time in WoD.

:cookie:

57

Hmmmm…

  • S-tier: Vanilla, TBC, Legion
  • A-tier: Wrath, MoP
  • B-tier: Cataclysm
  • C-tier: BFA
  • D-tier: WoD, Shadowlands

And if you look at the “S-tier” expansions from this list, what is the common denominator?? LOTS OF CONTENT

Seriously… I don’t think people realize just how much the “content” aspect of the game has been pruned over the years. We’ve been getting steadily and steadily less content over the years, it’s subtle but it really “stands out” once you actually step back and do some basic compare & contrast.

I’ll use dungeons as just one example:

Vanilla: 20ish dungeons
TBC: 16 dungeons
Legion: 14 dungeons
…
Shadowlands: 8 dungeons

… ^^^ talk about “shrink-flation” :laughing:

2 Likes
58

  1. Mists of Panda (timeless isle was the highlight of this expansion)

  2. Legion (Lets be real, this is arguably the best recent expansion WoW has ever came out with… idc what anybody says.)

  3. TBC

  4. WotLk (lots of good memories)

  5. Cata (was good but also the expansion that changed everything, the last raid was also toxic af)

  6. WoD (the only reason being is because the content in this expansion is non existent)

  7. SL (consider 7 & 8 the same= hot garbage)

  8. BFA (consider 7 & 8 the same= hot garbage)

1 Like
59

too much disrespect for BFA in this topic , BFA underrated af

1 Like
60

Wrath
MoP
Legion
Cata
BFA
SL
.
.
.
WoD
.
.
.
.
BC

I hated BC with a burning passion.

And WoD was easily the single worst idea they ever could have concocted.

61

WoD - Unpopular opinion but honestly WoD was my favorite expansion because it was super casual. Gave us player housing (though zero effort went into building on what we got) There was no real borrowed power system, no falling behind, If you look at the content it had 1 less dungeon and the same amount of raids as shadowlands. WoD was meant to be a 1 year expansion, it lasted 2 which was a problem but still no guilt in playing 30-60 mins a day then playing something else. Unlike Legion-Shadowlands. If youre not doing your infinite rep grinds, anima grinds, artifact power, azerite power, etc, etc you arent going to be as strong, you wont get those mounts, toys, transmogs.

Vanilla - Because it was my first MMO and blew my mind. Nothing can regain the magical feeling of logging in for the first time. In retrospect the content and base game were trash compared to now, we played for gear but also played just to play… There was really this collection meta game which might actually be a negative thats ruining my gaming experience but I enjoy it for a time anyway.

WoTLK - Lets be honest, the warcraft3 Arthas/Lich king story line is the best warcraft story ever has been or ever will be.

Cata -. Cool concept, poor delivery. Would have been cool if each patch the world was being destroyed more, the destruction happens in the opening cinematic then thats it no more deathwing till the end of the game. Kinda weak.
MOP - I enjoyed the theme of this expansion, it gave the roots to the garrison with our own little farm to manage, down sides are insanely low drop chance of world boss mounts (still trying to get some after 12000+ attempts to this day) The begining of the war on flying. “Leveling is a ground experience” i agree 1000000%… for the first character. maybe even the first 5 but at this point i had 15 alts.

Legion - The artifact weapons and class story lines were an amazing single player experience, the problem is this was an MMO so the story trying to make you feel SPECIAL falls flat when you see thousands of others with your same 1 of a kinda weapon. This was the begining of the end for WoW. They gave us what we all wanted… World content we had to go out and do ourselves unlike WoD where follower missions did all the work. Well now WoW has turned into an 80 hour a week job if you do all world content. That doesnt even count end game dungeons/raids/pvp (playtime depends on alts, basically Legion started the punishment of playing lots of alts, the more alts the worse your experience)

BFA - Only putting this here because of 8.3, Launch i didnt care, nautical themed expansion with little effort put into that aspect release when sea of thieves had dropped a few months prior and changed (ruined) my view on sailing and ships in games forever. But the way corruptions just utterly broke the game felt amazing. Its sad but its the best borrowed power system they added because it just made nonsense. Sad the only way the game felt good in years was to break it…

TBC was the first expansion I actually stopped playing. It had some fun areas but the content was tedious. I dunno its just a bad expansion with a cool boss. Illidan was the figure head of the game and people go nuts for him. Its kind like how Phantom Menace was bad… But Darth Maul tho… ok 10/10 just for Maul.

SL - By far the worst expansion in WoW history. The level design (maining a venthry first, probably didnt help, by far the worst zone to navigate outside of the maw) No flight whistle (BS reason that we would be getting flying sooner than ever, i think the plan was 6 months but turned to 9) They promised early flying and by the time we actually got flying ok now go play in Korthia all day where you can fly. Oh now a new patch where you have to unlock flying AGAIN. The lack of content, levels of grind, amount of non account wide unlocks (why do i have to do the covenant campaign 16x to unlock cosmetics!!!) Having to grind the covenant special building 4x 1 for each armor type… I did the embercourt ONCE and wanted to hurt myself every time. You think I wanna do it 3 more times? Its a reputation thing too so if Rep was account wide my alts could buy the cosmetics

Classic wow shouldnt be on this list
Classic TBC shouldnt be on this list

IMO the “classics” are not expansions. while they are attempts to recreate the game as it was back at original release they fail on 2 fronts, fully remaking it when most people who made it have moved on or been fired combined with the mentality of the player base today where everything needs min maxing and no one has the patience for wipes and longer play sessions fails at capturing the real feel. Combine with that the dark portal pass, the fact they put a new low res cash shop mount in TBC where you get a higher res version and retail. and a toy that you can only use in TBC. These lower res things should be on retail as well. I was an adult when WoW came out not a child who was too young to see the games flaws back in the day. Theres no nostalgia for me with classic. Im not going to farm mounts in classic if they dont unlock in retail.

Its ironic the friends I had in wow who went to play classic only quit retail because “everything takes too long” ok so youre playing the version of the game where everything literally took longer… makes sense.

Personally while it would be a coding nightmare I think every expansion should be in caverns of time on retail, let you level through expansion how ever you want and get the old experience, but also can revisit those old versions with your current gear to farm old cosmetics and mounts. there shouldnt be a divide between classic and retail