WoW had many good, but also some bad expansions. But which time was the most terrible? You have voted and here is the result.
A few days ago, we asked which expansion of World of Warcraft our readers on MeinMMO felt was the weakest so far. Now enough time has passed and we have a result that is even relatively clear. Although the final result is not a huge surprise, it is now black on white what the WoW players of our site think. More than 5,000 of you participated in the survey.
Place 5: Legion
Even though place 5 of the “worst expansions” of WoW sounds threatening, one should still note that Legion could only gather 4% of the votes (211 people). Legion was generally considered a very good expansion that included a great progression system with artifact weapons and offered exciting raids at the beginning.
A major point of criticism of Legion was the legendary items and how one could earn them. A lot depended on luck – this frustrated numerous players. Frustration arose when the “Best in Slot” Legendary simply wouldn’t drop.
Place 4: Cataclysm
With 14% of the votes (718 people), Cataclysm comfortably placed 4th, and this has several reasons.
On the one hand, the overhaul of the old game world did not please everyone. The World of Warcraft, as players had known it for years, was gone. Quests, items, and entire areas disappeared or were restructured – and sometimes only half-heartedly. Some areas barely appeared changed and received only minimal adjustments, while others were fundamentally recreated.
Unfortunately, the last raid against Deathwing is also unforgettable. The boss fight was seen by many as a disappointment because it was not a classic fight against a dragon, but a battle against tentacles, scales, and blisters.
Place 3: Mists of Pandaria
With just under 15% (779 people), Mists of Pandaria lands in third place among the least popular expansions.
The biggest criticism of Pandaria at the time of release was the graphics. Many could not warm up to the Asian style. It was also noted negatively that the Pandaren, as a „Kung-fu-Panda“ copy, were inappropriate and would trivialize World of Warcraft too much.
Even though many now have positive memories of MoP, such as the great feel of the individual classes or the beautiful landscapes, the introduction of Pandaren and a massively Asian-themed game environment remains a hotly debated point among fans to this day. One often hears: “When the pandas came, WoW went downhill.”
This also coincided with the abolishment of the “real” talent trees, which many still miss today.
Lastly, many have a dreadful memory of the last months of MoP. The final raid “Siege of Orgrimmar” was active for over a year and by the end, it really got on the players’ nerves.
Place 2: Warlords of Draenor
With significantly more percentage of the votes, Warlords of Draenor achieves a dubious second place. 29% (1,471 people) of you found the journey into the past of the shattered world terrible. This had many reasons that became obvious at the start of the expansion and increased even more over the months.
WoD has impressively shown what happens when a minor side feature becomes too important. The garrison in Draenor offered so much gold and resources that players often did nothing but organize their follower missions. That alone would probably not have been so problematic if there had been alternatives. But there were hardly any in the open world – rather boring “daily zones” with disappointing rewards meant that hardly anyone left the garrison unless they wanted to visit dungeons or raids.
Other minor issues have also remained in negative memory – just think of the “Twitter patch,” whose biggest feature was the SELFIE camera with Twitter integration.
Finally, the hasty ending of WoD led to harsh criticism. The story was not concluded sensibly, many plot points were dropped or logically interconnected. This makes Warlords of Draenor for many still today the worst expansion – but the actual “throne” has been taken by another addon…
Place 1: Battle for Azeroth
Rather ungloriously, the latest expansion of World of Warcraft, Battle for Azeroth, lands in first place among the least popular WoW addons. A whopping 34% (1,693 people) of you, that is more than one in three, considered BfA the weakest of all addons.
This actually began with the beta test of the addon. Azerite armor caused harsh criticism because it restricted players too much. Each specialization needed new gear, and the distribution of these special “Azerite abilities” was also semi-permanent. Therefore, anyone who had to fulfill multiple roles needed several item sets and could only adjust existing armor with massively increasing gold costs.
But even the major features of the expansion fell short of expectations. The flagship of the “Warfronts” soon turned out to be a rather monotonous PvE battle that was quite boring after the first time – the reason why only a second warfront came before the feature was discontinued.
Also the island expeditions quickly became just a “grind fest”, apart from the PvP variant. They had little to do with exploration and the feeling of discovery. Instead, it was a race against time to gather as many enemies as possible to then blast them away. Some liked it, but many found it terribly boring.
Even though Blizzard fixed many of these issues with each patch, that helped little. At the same time, new systems were introduced that brought new problems with them. Be it the Azerite essences from patch 8.2 that needed to be farmed anew for each character or the corruption system from patch 8.3 that completely spiraled out of control and rendered many classes absurd. Unfortunately, the least popular expansion lasts the longest.
What do we learn from this? The newer expansions are rather unpopular among many players. There can be many reasons for this – but mostly it is probably the change. With all the criticism, we must not forget that even the least popular expansions brought innovations that were groundbreaking and are still useful today. Warlords of Draenor brought the overhaul of the character models, Battle for Azeroth numerous new species as allied races and some of the best cinematics WoW has ever had. Perhaps our view of the past will change in a few years.
We can only hope that the next expansion Shadowlands satisfies as many players as possible – that would be really good for World of Warcraft and its fans.
