What's your favorite expansion?!

[Sketchbag]

I started playing WoW during TBC. Zangarmarsh had a huge impact on me as a gamer, especially since WoW and Diablo were the only fantasy games I ever played. I grew up playing Bond, Wrestling and sports games primarily. Zelda didn't appeal to me back then. Netherstorm and Zangarmarsh just blew me away while all the other zones were close behind. Mote farming in Nagrand was kinda fun too, miss running into friends there. For me my fav expansion is TBC and it's by a lot. I lost a pretty cool GF during Wrath of the Lich King but that's another tale, lol. I did find it curious when looking at the dates between each release, the gap between TBC and Wrath was TINY!

What is your favorite expansion and why?

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[CroyeTchor]

Personnaly I find a few different answers to be all as valid as one another.

If we're talking about playing the xpac as a max level, I only did that during DF but I sure as hell had a blast. Beautiful, huge zones, pretty cool factions on the Dragon Isles, nice lore on side quests (not as good for the main story, especially the last patch sadly), even if the story was meh for the patch, access to the Emerald Dream is very enjoyable.
The loot system was simple enough for a casual like me, dungeons were accessible, Resto Shaman felt great (at my level ofc) and dicovering the content felt very refreshing since I only ever played trial before.

If we take into consideration Classic then that would take the cake but I was barely even alive when the game came out so no real Vanilla for me.
That said Classic was still a mighty fine adventure, nice people, slower gameplay, good immersion and a "fresh" vision of the old world for me. Class fantasy is on point and even if I suck, I enjoy me some Classic from time to time.

But realistically the expac I had the most fun with was SL, purely trial, the whole world was fresh and asking to be explored (well besides the few zones we had available before which I still enjoy very much). The power level felt -at least for me- a lot more pleasant, ground mounts only would be kind of a pain now that we tasted flying but I believe this restriction added to the excitement of exploration. Only knock on the xpac at 20 is that most classes felt incomplete.


Now if we're talking about which expansion is the most fun/enjoyable/liked in regards to "how does it feel for us 20s nowadays" and personnal opinions on aesthetics/lore/music, there's a lot of good xpacs like Wrath, WoD (for trials I find the lore pretty solid since we mostly get the war on the Iron Horde and some Shadow Council stuff) and the Vanilla/Cata content. All have generally useful profs (besides maybe WoD but then again it used to be our source of bags), I love the aesthetics and lore, the quests are pretty neat (maybe a bit less for the Vani/Cata zones as they tend to be a bit too streamlined with a lot of zones lacking a real story : then again, it does help feel like an adventurer).

But fuck me, MoP is goated. Content is cool, quests are solid, not crazy, but the aesthetics man. The lore of the continent is surprisingly well-developped and accessible to 20s, pandas are neat, I like 'em, Valley of the Four Winds, Halfhill, having our own little farm, the Anglers are neat, the Grummles are superb, Hozens rock, Garrosh is batshit insane but I don't give a shit I've got a farm and he can't have it.
The Panda starting zone is also fairly good, kinda like the xpac, surprisngly so.
And don't get me started on immersion and RP. The continent is amazing for that.
Only knock would be that we can't have animals on our farm but alas, can't have everything can we ? Stardew Valley exists after all and we can't surpass perfection.

Sorry for the long answer, just a lot of interesting possibilities to approach the question and a lot of good qualities on a lot of xpacs.

 

[Chops]

It's always been WOTLK for me. I love that it wraps up the primary Warcraft stories, the armor aesthetics are... decent, the zone aesthetics are perfect (god grizzly hills still holds up and howling fjord? perfect) the twinking was the best its ever been, the raids were good. Just absolute peak WoW. It had its flaws (naxx redux was stupid, class bloat and homogenization started here, etc) but it was the very best version of the game and WOTLK Classic proved that wasnt just rose tinted glasses.

Close second is TBC. The armor sets (especially the pvp sets) are my favorite in the game. It was the Expansion I raided pretty hardcore in and both Kara and ZA 10 man runs remain my all-time favorite raiding experiences. Even when they were on farm status with alts. I dont think I've ever had more fun than running ZA for the bear mount. My only complaint (and its a bit of a big one) is that the story felt like one big side quest. Also 3 of the 4 zones were just ugly as all fuck. AND it introduced rated arena and flying mounts, two extremely poor decisions that have fucked the game ever since.

Which brings me to... Vanilla! I've come back to the game recently, mostly to "retire" my retail twinks either to their garrisons or (mostly) to the delete button. But I picked up my old Classic Era toon (now level 41!). And I've been *really* enjoying returning to Vanilla. The intentional leveling, the slower pace, the "permanent" state of the game, the solved nature of raiding. All these things lend themselves to the game feeling quite freeing. I can pick it up and put it down without feeling like I'm falling behind or missing things. It's... oddly still quite populated. I see ALOT more people out and about in the world than retail. It feels like a real, open world I can go on adventures in again. Which is really nice. Especially for much busier and older me.

So I guess all this is to say, currently... my favorite "expansion" is Classic Era. It rules.

 

[flux1]

Wrath was my peak enjoyment of the game and when I participated in all the end game stuff and had fun doing so.

Everything since then has been chasing that same feeling to a degree.

 

[Knucklehead]

Vanilla isn't an Xpac but goes #1 because it started it all. The rest is tuff because they all had value.. Only thing to mention would be when all the queer shit in DF started being phased in

 

[Magrain]

I don't specifically have 1 favorite expansion, it's 3 but if I HAD TO CHOOSE, it's Legion.
I've been playing since the end of TBC and it's always been casual. It's Legion where I was a sweaty raider and done Mythic Antorus which was imo, the most grandious thing I can think of. I hated Mythic Kil'jeaden, that was messed up. Another reason why I loved legion, was Suramar City, the sheer fact that it was in Warcraft 3 as Maieve stated and now we can finally see it ourselves in WoW, that was a real treat. Legion was the proper send off and love letter to the Warcraft 3 franchise. Not whatever the fuck Shadowlands was.

PS: Warlocks were the apex of their height in Legion so yeah.

 

[Conzil]

Depends on the context
I loved MoP as an actual expansion
But I loved Shadowlands for what it did for F2P twinking, even though the expansion itself was terrible

 

[wily.virus]

I never played original Legion, but I'm having a blast right now in Remix. I even subbed for one month to get a proper Legion experience in, and Suramar indeed is the best zone. Very immersive and outshines most other zones if you could experience it properly (lvl 30+)

I heard from others Shadowlands could be a good Remix candidate too, as long as grindy aspects are minimized and eliminated. Shadowlands itself has great art design and immersion. However Warcraft it is not. It may as well be a new standalone IP with zero connection to Azeroth.

 

[toskosa]

Its a tough choice between tbc and mop, I had a lot of fun in mop pvping with friends but overall I like tbc more for its gameplay.

 

[icehawk]

Mine has to be MoP. I started playing at the end of Wrath so never really got into it or TBC before that.

I was still playing end game during MoP, with heaps of arena and bg’s. I also started to dip my toes into the 20-24 bracket it may have been back then.

Just really liked the whole experience of MoP. There was also heaps of world PvP. Had some really good battles and some real arch enemies in Pandaria.

Fun times.

 

[SPQR]

wrath hands down.
it has entire tbc in it + howling fjord/grizzly hills .

 

[twoshotmiyagi]

I joined the game as a F2P to begin with and that was my identity for quite a while. So, I don't feel like I have any strong attachment or feelings towards any specific expansion, given that I've only ever gotten to experience a small portion of the game for so long. Regardless, if I had to choose one expansion, it would be MoP because that's when I first joined, lol. Well, luckily enough, I started on a realm with lots of F2P players on there, which made for great memories. Although the timing was coincidental, I did enjoy MoP itself because it offered lots of fun toys to collect. I had a lot of fun farming on Timeless Isle, for example. Ironically, it was only when WoD was released that me and my F2P friends could actually go to Pandaria and explore (if memory serves me right). But yeah, MoP for me, I guess.

 

[Rowanney]

Initially, I had misconceptions about MMO genre. And when I encountered the Lich King expansion, I didnt like it for many reasons. Later, I tried Warcraft trial version, and thanks to the community and, in particular PvP aspect, I became hooked on the game. The best expansion for me is Battle for Azeroth (BFA). It the closest to the "image" of an MMO that I originally envisioned. And that was the best time I spent in the game, even in trial version.

 

[Rowanney]

I never played original Legion, but I'm having a blast right now in Remix. I even subbed for one month to get a proper Legion experience in, and Suramar indeed is the best zone. Very immersive and outshines most other zones if you could experience it properly (lvl 30+)

I heard from others Shadowlands could be a good Remix candidate too, as long as grindy aspects are minimized and eliminated. Shadowlands itself has great art design and immersion. However Warcraft it is not. It may as well be a new standalone IP with zero connection to Azeroth.

Well, that not true. Originally, Warcraft was planned to have a world of shadows\dead. But Blizzard couldnt implement it due to purely technical reasons. And now these ideas have been realized in Shadowlands. Clumsily, foolishly, but it was bound to happen sooner or later.

 

[Purj]

TBC > Vanilla > Wrath > MOP > Legion > Cata > BFA > WOD > Others