What WoW expansion do you think was best guys? I myself, am a Vanilla Player, I found the content back then very hard to do defeat, and gear was hard to get when you were rolling/bidding against 39 people. When TBC hit, things were basically the same, but when everyone started getting High-End gear, things were starting to get easy. The only downfall was WoTLK, where was the challenge in getting gear? You can get some decent raiding gear doing HC's and getting full T9 with the accessories, you can end up with around 4.5k GS when you've got every possible item you can get and then you can get in ICC10 pugs, which I hate in every possible way, even with low gear you can do good, they messed up when they implemented the 30% buff, it's making everything to easy to kill. I have a main with 6258 GS, and I'm not saying "HEY!!! I HAVE MOAR GAYSCOREEE THAN U!", I just look back at how I got my gear, and I really didn't see the focus or work I put in... you can do ICC blindfolded, its the same thing every week. I'm just hoping Cataclysm is going to be the same challenge as Vanilla was, or whats the point?

So, from my point of view, the best expansion was PRE-TBC and the worst being WoTLK.

Burning Crusade was fun but it lacked a coherent narrative. Sure there was an ever present concept of stopping the Burning Legion but it never really felt fleshed out By the time I finished with Shadow Moon Valley I didn't really feel like I had done anything to deserve my Confrontation with Illidan.
Lastly, the armor designs were awful, with the exception of the dungeon sets the armor rewards you got from enemy drops or questing seemed to be tailor made to make you look like a dork. It's hard to feel like a powerful champion of the Horde wearing a lime green robe, black boots, a yellow cape and a purple pimp hat.

That's not to say BC didn't do some things right. I loved the inclusion of the Bombing Run missions, most of the dungeons were a lot more fun to grind through than the ones in Old Azeroth and areas like Nagrand and the Blade's Edge Mountains were an absolute thrill to quest through.

Wrath of the Lich King by contrast did a spectacular job of telling a story. Each zone you went to felt like a major step forward on your eventual journey into Icecrown and little added details like having the world change according to your actions helped solidify the feeling of progress.
I especially loved the Wrathgate event, I don't want to spoin it on the odd chance someone hasn't played through it yet but it's easily my favorite moment in the game so far.
Lastly I loved the way they handled rep grinding for the various factions. I'd much rather do a handful of daily quests than grind for items to turn in. If I never see another Obsidian Warbead it'll be too soon.

On the other hand, in what I have to assume is an attempt to counter the "clown suit" armor issue from BC there are only like 2 or 3 armor designs for each class in the game and they're all in variant shades of gray or brown. I appreciate that it gives a more coherent feel to the outfit and it fits in with the feeling of the zone but a little more detail would have been nice.

I started playing WoW a couple of months before TBC dropped, so i got an UD rogue into the 40's before buying the expansion. I'm sure it's a perception sort of thing, but that was my favourite expansion for the game. I remember getting into my first raiding guild, getting slotted in for Karazhan on the Shade of Aran for my first boss encounter (we wiped terribly.)

Our little guild never made it much past SSC, but i remember loving every minute of raiding. That first time we dropped Gruul was EPIC. Going back again with subsequent toons, i do agree that the colours on the armour (especially in early levels) is pretty putrid. Especially for casters. My priest and my mage both went thru the majority of that expansion looking like doofus', but... I still have yet to find as much fun in the game as i did raiding and playing arena at 70.

That being said, if you weren't lucky enough to be in a dedicated guild at 70, you would NEVER see that true endgame content. The way gear is dished out now, at least it is possible for the non-hardcore (but dedicated) players to see some endgame.

Novskij:
TBC design didnt fit WoW..... It was visually diffrent from WoW, and i didnt like how outland looked.

You have a point on most of Outland, however Hellfire Peninsula was perfect for the Warcraft Lore, it looked and felt exactly how I remembered it from Warcraft 2 and 3.

I still get chills every time I enter that zone, it's just marvelous and it's one of the major reasons why I loved The Burning Crusade.

Vanilla WoW had a lot of problems. Being a part of the Hardcore raiding enviroment at that time, I wasn't really paying attention to the fact that only around 160 people, on an entire active server actually got to see the endgame content, or even had access to good gear.
However the old world of warcraft managed to create the most awesome and challenging instance as of yet. Naxxramas (not the WotlK version!).

Burning Crusade made World of Warcraft the perfect MMO. Designwise, and in terms of lore, the expansion was horrible. Draeneis (in their current form) came out of nowhere sort of. Illidan was set to be the villain, but Kil'jaeden and Kael'thas ended up being the real bad guys (apparantly). However this horrible package, was made tolerable with great gameplay. SSC and Hyjal sucked. Tempest Keep, Karazhan, Zul'aman timed, Black Temple and Sunwell Plateu were fantastic raid instances. Arena also arrived and created a sort of competitive PvP enviroment for World of Warcraft.

WotlK was the exact opposite of Burning Crusade. WotlK was much much more cooler than Burning Crusade lorewise. The zones were fantastic, the instances looked darker and grittier, and not so damn eyebleeding as Tempest Keep and Mechanar was. However the game was far far far too easy. Levelling also became trivialized, gear was pratically easy to farm. I can get 4500 Gearscore character nowadays, just by buying BoE items off the AH. 2 runs through Icecrown Citadel 10 man on my recently dinged Priest has left me with full epic gear and roughly 2500 SP with.....18 hours /played at level 80! What WotlK DID bring though was another much needed Tank class, and the wonderful LFG system.

Cataclysm brings a much needed change to World of Warcraft. They thrash the bad game designs, and start demanding something from the players again. (Playing in the Beta, I know!).

Cataclysm is gonna be the best expansion in my humble opinion.

Oh yeah and Horde have only received unintresting crap races. Goblins and more Elves isn't that damn innovative, while Draenei and Worgen actually added something new different to the game.

i hardly played wotl, didn't even get a toon to 80. by that point though i was pretty burnt out by it all. i'll probably start up again with cata though because i want to see how much everything will change. i'll probably end up playing it for 5-6 days after realizing it's the same meal but just a different plate.

Phaerim:
Oh yeah and Horde have only received unintresting crap races. Goblins and more Elves isn't that damn innovative, while Draenei and Worgen actually added something new different to the game.

I like goblins! :<
I've been wanting to play a goblin character since the release of WoW vannila.

Either way, I'm really looking forward to the expansion since it will change so much of the older content to. I like leveling toons so this will make the game a lot more fun for me.
I just wish blizzard would start adding more new (different) content to WoW and I don't mean new dungeons or such but actually new stuff, Player owned houses for example. Most MMO's nowadays got double the content there is to find in Wow.

I personally loved Burning Crusade, with its introduction of Blood Elves and Draenei as new races, the expansion of the lore specifically with the Blood Elf being former Alliance High Elves thing, and beautiful new environments (except 2 of them). Compared to WoTLK is shined like a gem.

TBC had more longevity for me over the other expansions I felt. I certainly leveled the most characters during TBC.

I do agree with the points that it wasn't very good at telling a story, but it made up for that with class flexibility and some improvements that were long overdue.

With Wrath I only got two characters to 80, and leveling through the content once just felt like enough.

In the new Cata content I've done - which is some of the leveling zones in the old world - they do feel improved and there's some interesting quests and chains about the place.
Not experienced the high level content yet, but the low level stuff is better than it was for the most part.

Wotlk easy.

In lick king we have seen:

1300 rated scrubs gaining a glad title then fading back to obscurity

The infamous 1 shot (the ability to global someone)

Epics more common than blues and greens

The arrival of GS over skill and actually knowing your class (MM hunter with rowen rifle of silver bullets ftw)

DK's, generally who couldnt even be laughably described as balanced till 3.3 in pvp or pve

Instances cleared 2 days after release

Pugs clearing heroic LK on better pve realms

Pugs clearing normal LK on all realms

The removal of 2v2 from rated arena, while the joke that is 5v5 persists

Prot/holy palas

Beastcleave

Prot warriors

Fan of knifes spec

Continuing failure to even attempt to balance PvP which is more dire than in previous seasons since it has been estimated in WotLK that over 70% of the population participated in pvp in some way

The best PvP gear being PvE gear

The arrival of ARP

The arrival of haste

Im pretty sure I could go on but Ill leave it there for now.

Wotlk had great storytelling, lore, and visuals but it made the game very easy unfortunately.

I voted that im gonna enjoy Cataclysm (I hope, it looks great from what i've seen and i've seen a lot) since I didn't hate wotlk as much as it trivialized the content, what can I say, I loves me a good storyline.

Im really hoping Cata will bring back some gimmick fights like Chess and Opera House, those were great fun and wotlk didn't really have any of that.

Off-Topic:

I really am a networking geek, whenever I see the abbreviation ARP I always read it 'Address Resolution Protocol'.

Ive never played Wow, so idk if Id like any of it

Novskij:
TBC design didnt fit WoW..... It was visually diffrent from WoW, and i didnt like how outland looked.

But i was glad that things were more balanced, and that it wasnt too hard to get gear, but neither too easy, it was fun.

In wotlk i quit for rl reasons, i loved the new visuals and design of Northrend, but PVP became a gib fest.

Not pointing fingers or anything, just wondering how long you've been following Warcraft. Outland was the way it was for a reason :) Also, I found it extremely refreshing. I remember the broken world I saw when walking through the portal, and the woooooooow feeling I had when I entered Zangarmarsh for the first time.

Overall TBC is the best part of wow imo. Vanilla instances were fantastic, but mostly because they were extremely hard at times (pre-epixxxxxx, and even blues...).

I'll totally get flamed for saying this, but the only reason I'm looking forward to Cata is because of the Worgen. I'm going to severely miss the Old Azeroth. I've spent years of my life in that place. It feels like you're leaving The Shire and will never come back to see it again, no matter how many giant eagles Peter Jackson throws at you.

Vanilla for the challenge, TBC for illidan (my favorite boss), and Wotlk for the arthas storyline and DK lore. but.. I think Cataclysm will be my favorite. Im actually looking forward to all the revamped instances and the new zones, not just the end boss lol. Actually, I know nothing of deathwing.

I liked TBC, it may not have had the most coherent story, but it did a great job adding and balancing content.

for those that were there since the beginning, Vanilla WoW was simply the best that WoW has ever been. back when the game actually required skill to play and the PvP system let people know who was awesome and who was not. World PvP was also most abundant that time and BG's were more competitive (old AV <3)

Vanilla or Burning Crusade. Wrath turned the game into Baby's First MMO, and they just seem to be dumbing it down even more with Cataclysm.

SadisticPretzel:
Vanilla or Burning Crusade. Wrath turned the game into Baby's First MMO, and they just seem to be dumbing it down even more with Cataclysm.

some stats may be dumbed down but it is compensating with more difficult dungeons and epics being limited to raid/rep/proffs and not faceroll heroic dungeons

Vanilla for nostalgia. BC was horrible bad bad bad. Wotlk was much better again. And Cataclysm is a ton of fun for me so far.

Hmmm Cata's questing is easily the best in the game, but I may have to go with WOTLK simply because I am a wc3 fanatic and that was practically the direct sequel.

Cataclysm might be the end of World of Warcraft, but at least it's going to be interesting. The Burning Crusade on the other hand is a waste of disc space. From start to finish.

TBC made me want to punch small infants. The questing was so terrible.

I love TBC because its story is intriguing, and i love the level 70, i love the way the armor looks, the way the outlands, the creatures there, and the bosses look. Yes, you are sort of dominating in it, but lots of times there is no way you can, like in WOTLK or Cata. WOTLK sort of ruined the game, i dont know about vanilla or how BC affected it, because i started in BC. Cata, on the other hand, is terrible. Why 85 and not 90? And the dungeons are so non-original, especially the Stonecore. I liked the way azeroth was before, without the landscape changes, the added places (twilight highlands, mount hyjal, etc.) I usually love questing, but the quests in Cataclysm are just terrible, Valj'ir was pretty fun but if you play there on a second character it is horrible. TBC dominates.

TBC, by far. I agree with a lot of critisism about some of the pre-endgame things, but all that was made up by an amazing raiding experience. It required dedication, and awarded it too. Killing bosses was so incredibly epic, even a simple one such as Gruul. 25 man is also a much better format than 40. Combine that with a very decent shot at class balance, and you get pretty much the best endgame you can realistically desire.

Anyway, takin' off the nostalgia glasses now.

I haven't had too much time to play over the last few years. Just got bored after a while. But I recently gave Cataclsym a go and I'm pleasamtly surprised with it. Maybe it was the time away. Kinda feels like a new game, but thats just my opinion.

Played for I believe 6 years+(it's been a long time and I was just a kid then) starting in vanilla to now. Mind you I am more pvp by a long shot than pve so my view may be narrow:)

Vanilla was an adventure for the most part because it was a big new world for people, it had many flaws, such as slow grinding, but it gave a distinct challenge(funny how six years can change society to be impatient more so then they were 6 years ago)that forced people to invest time and stand out for their accomplishments; Vanilla was best for me because a person could make a legacy back then(Marshals/Warlords/Master Raiders), so the time invested in it sorta paid off and the challenge in pvp was a hell of a lot funner(Some hated the 2-3 hour AVs but I loved em). All in all Vanilla had a great challenge and was more pvp oriented:Warlord/Grand Marshal rating system, a lot more world pvp which did piss off quite a few people trying to quest:) (Thunderfury: best weapon in the game for looks, ability, and epic history of owning all vanilla players!)

BC shifted wow towards questing and raids: which I as a hardcore pvper was a little sad at, but I did like the new races and emphases on design. Silvermoon City when I first walked into it gave me the same feeling as when I walked into Stormwind - Magnificent - the design is superb and the BC music is simply epic. The lore was general but manageable and at least people had some idea of what the heck was going on, mind you everyone that it was wow's first big expansion, so it was all very new to people including the designers. Yes the endgame raids were not to everyone's liking, but I believe the epicness in the boss fights made up for that. All in all BC kept the challenge in wow while trying a new outlook, think of it as the test expantion:) (BC had the best log in screen music out of all of them)

Wotlk - leveling is too easy, simple as that,in-depth lore...awesome boss(Lich King is the meaning of epic), and a nice new class - overpowered at first, but nice. I personally didn't do a lot of dungeons and raids in wotlk because the entire expansion seemed to make the game a no-brainer. All in all wotlk had a good lore, a great end boss, and an in-depth storyline; it was just to easy. (Arthus = The Lich King = Pure Epicness)

Cataclysm is the crash on our ride:) New in everything. So far I like the questing(especially for a new player/it is good for them), the new areas are gorgeous, and the lvling is...fast but whatever/we're used to it by now:) A great expansion for those who wanted new. (No zone has stayed the exact same:) and phasing in quests is being used to the max - makes it interesting)

Personally: vanilla was best for hardcore pvp, BC was best for design and raids, Wotlk was best for lore and new class, and Cataclysm is best for the lvling.

PS: This is viewed by a pvper's perspective and probably contains many errors. I have over one-million honorable kills:) Love you raiders and raids, but pvp is the best.

The game has changed so much since TBC but basically I would break it down like this.
-Raiding was solid although exclusive if you got into the game later/didn't play a in demand class
-There was no LFD or matching with people from other servers so you actually had a sense of community with the people on your server
*You actually knew who were the good guilds
*People weren't pricks as much since you had to keep a reputation if you wanted to get
groups for dungeons
-You regularly grouped with the same people so you actually met people in game and had "efriends"
-Heroics were actually heroic, mostly either on par or above the heroics when cata first dropped
Cons
-Locks (sl/sl) and Healers were practically unkillable (especially resto druids)
-For casters if you wanted to raid you pretty much had to be a tailor (and hence had to farm the shit out of elementals if you wanted to do competitive dps).
-Finding groups took forever.

In WotLK it went downhill fast
-The lore surrounding it was cool and the questing was definitely more engaging
-LFD was probably the worst thing they did to the game (especially with making it cross server) followed by hardmodes on raid encounters
-Pvp was a huge burst fest
-Pugs could easily complete every raid
-It didn't hold everyone's attention for the duration of the expansion like TBC did (most people I knew took a break from WoW sometime in Wrath or quit completely (I actually didn't play for the majority of it)

Cata looked like it might be an improved TBC before it launched and when it hit
-Dungeons were actually challenging for the most part and required people to use more than aoe abilities (cc was actually needed).
-Healing and tanking became more difficult as well.
-Pvp was substantially more balanced than in the beginning of Wrath.
-But as expected people who started playing in Wrath/were use to that type of game-play and cried about it until it got nerfed which it did.. repeatedly.
-More old pve content was recycled not really helping things along with not enough content even being available (TBC offered like 15 dungeons when it dropped cata had 9 if you count the reused two only for heroics).

The game in itself is just as important as the other people you are playing it with, if not the people being more important. Since blizzard made the game easier for more people they also inadvertently made it easier for people not to talk to each other. Sure it made the game a lot more convenient and allowed a lot more people to see the content but it made the game a lot less epic and memorable. Ask anyone who played in vanilla or TBC where their most fun times were and see what they say. Now that you can pug everything and never have to get in vent or really communicate with anyone it's lost a lot of its appeal and just isn't as fun as it use to be.