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Wrath of the Lich King was the Best WoW Expansion

Something about Battle for Azeroth was announced today. Maybe a release date or prepurchase or something? I don’t know, but the news has people talking about WoW again in our community and the main topic hasn’t been contemporary.

I’m probably not telling you anything you don’t already know and agree with completely. Wrath of the Lich King was so far beyond and away the best WoW expansion there has been and likely — given its direction — ever will be.

What made it so good?

The Dungeons

Every Wrath dungeon was so replayable compared to other expansions. Rarely was I burned out on running them, and I’m pretty sure I ran them constantly. Rose colored glasses? Nope, because every time the timewalk dungeons came around I still had fun.

Tokens & Armor System

The armor system just made sense to me. I liked the token gear grinding. I liked how heirlooms fit into the equation. I liked how I didn’t need a tutorial video to figure out how to get gear. I didn’t have to worry about running all over the map collecting crap or doing gimmicky repeatable quests…. though there were definitely

Raids

Icecrown Citadel was a magnificent raid. It was the right mix of difficulty — having a bonus helped — and the mechanics weren’t (all) completely ridiculous. The fights were tame enough that you could actually look at and appreciate the surroundings of the fight without having to only pay attention to DBM.

Argent Tournament is probably my favorite raid. What wasn’t to love about sitting in one room and not having to wade through hours of trash? One boss after another.

 

Yeah, that pretty much sums it up. Cool setting, dungeons I didn’t hate myself for repeating, two raids that were fun for me, and a progression system that felt fine to me, like I knew what I was working towards and easily had objectives.

Legion, while initial neat, was an absolute mess to me. If Battle for Azeroth is cleaning up the meta game and making things not about raids, someone let me know. Otherwise, it’s a skip.

  • Burning crusade and the first season of arena was my personal favorite. People were figuring out how to be competitive and it was just insanity, plus burst damage was low so it was very chess like.

    Wraith was number two though in my book.

  • Vanilla was best with BC a close second, after that the game changed too much in a direction I dont care for.

  • World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade is my #1 ‘version’ of WoW. Karazhan was just a fun raid with a unique area, fun boss fights, and was the first raid which my (newly formed) guild would be able to conquer proudly. WOTLK is a close second.

    World of Warcraft: Vanilla:
    – Redefined the genre
    – Reimagined the Warcraft universe and got me into the genre

    World of Warcraft: TBC:
    – Fixed a lot of the issues Vanilla had (class identity/usability, etc)
    – Loved the multiple biome ‘zone’ diversity
    – Introduced my favorite Warcraft character: Illidan

    World of Warcraft: WotLK:
    – Really made the game approachable
    – Gorgeous zones
    – Raid content was top-notch

    World of Warcraft: Cataclysm:
    – I love deathwing
    – I loved Blizzard tackling the idea of recreating their old content
    – I love Vash’jir. Under-water zones are just so jaw-dropping and fun to explore.

    World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria:
    – Breathtaking visuals
    – New ‘neutral’ class was a cool idea
    – Emphasis on faster dungeons and raids

    World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor:
    – Fun improvement to questing
    – Siege of Orgrimmar is a great raid

    World of Warcraft: Legion:
    – Huge improvement to questing
    – I liked the Artifact weapons a lot
    – Emphasis on classes (questing, etc)
    – faster content

    *That is pretty much my quick thoughts on each expansion.

  • Burning Crusade was the best! Hardcore raiding, long attunments, not casual friendly.

    Also pvp was the best during this time.

  • I’m with you on the Wrath of the Lich King front. It is the only expansion that I played through until the next expansion showed up. All the others I took at least some sort of break for a few months.

  • Wrath was my favourite expansion as well, with Mists of Pandaria being a close second. Cataclysm and Draenor were low points for me. Legion has been pretty good overall but not amazing.

    That being said, I haven’t stopped playing WoW for more than a few months at a time since 2007 and I have no intention of stopping any time soon. Looking forward to Battle for Azeroth, I like what I’m seeing so far.

  • Burning Crusade was the best for sure. That expansion had far and away the best combat. after BC blizzard started dumbing down the combat and removing flavor spells from the classes… everything worked well, It was smooth and polished without being too easy mode…. i wish blizzard could strike that balance again.

  • Another vote for BC although WotLK gets the nod for story.

    And that’s the thing…for me WoW should’ve ended at WotLK. I think for the creatve leaders at Blizz it did. But $$$…

    Soooo…Cataclysm (Such a fail don’t get me started on that rant) the youth money grab and Pandarian (is that even how you…I don’t care) the China money grab…

    Before WoD where Blizz woke the hell up and realized there where plenty of players who cared about the franchise and for whom it was a hobby.

    Legion totally worked for me. Mythic+ and the world quest system fit the time I had in my day to complete challenging or rewarding systems.

    I keep playing because imo it’s the best video game that’s ever been made.