Read more about Shadowlands ➜ https://worldofwarcraft.mgn.gg
Good or bad, World of Warcraft expansion endings always get us talking! With the end cinematic of Shadowlands’s final raid out, it’s time to see how all WoW’s endings stack up.
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I really hope things don't continue as they have.
Playing as horde, legion was the shittiest experience ever imo. I felt like i was not ment for the story, kinda like that caverns of time dungeon where you turn human…
the jailer ending was the worst. legion was the best
Shadowlands is so bad it deserves to be #20 on this list.
I agree with you 100%
Burning Crusade, Wrath, Cata, and Legion are the only expansions that hold up and honor the lore, with MoP getting honorable mention only because of Garrosh.
Why wasn't Shadowlands the Denathrius/Dread Lord expansion? They would have had some actual preexisting lore to work with and would be a way more interesting villain than "no dialogue Thanos."
Giant sword, titans jailed, factions ending the single biggest threat known…aaaaaaaaaaand LOOK SHINY STONES LETS FIGHT. Honestly? After wotlk classic I hope they say fuck it and retcon everything. Wow 2.0. Redo cata and the other expansions and write them the way they were meant to be
I like Wrath more than Legion, but I can respect your opinion. Other than that your list is spot on imo
for what did the primus craft the crown of will? we even didn't use it during the jailer's fight?
I actually feel as though the writing for Legion was a bit rushed considering it was the greatest threat in the cosmos defeated in a single expansion.
I'm impress that no one is mad about Arthars's end… god dammit, his ending sucks balls…. biggest villain of the series, ended as a night elf wisp….
Legion was my fav addon, the only thing that sucked for me was the legendary rng
I still like LK the best
Shadowlands storytelling is the perfect example of why writing teachers tell their students to “show” things in a story rather than “tell” them, which itself is fascinating as Shadowlands has simultaneously told us nothing. But IMO it has shown us even less than it has told us.
I loved Mists of Pandaria so much…
Wrath > Legion
BFA was a mess but it was still better than WoD.
It's an aside, but for me MoP is the last high-quality expansion we got. Legion comes close as they actually gave it longer time, but really even Legion suffered a bit with disconnects between the teams, like how the questing used the maps etc. Val'sharah is a good example to contrast with Jade Forest; the amount of quests, world quests etc that was to fit in it made it so every inch had to be a mini-biome whereas Jade Forest is one of the best zones ever put into an MMO just for what it is. I like them both but the former just has to make a lot of compromises endemic to the newer expansions.
Still, Legion is the best one since then just for how it at least had that Warcraft feel, and it had a lot of things to tie you to the game world. Part of the issue of the last two is that it has made the areas feel so disposable in their context with the rest of the world (or even within the same expansion in some cases), even when they are visually amazing like Ardenweald.
The ending to Shadowlands is Ysera ripping through reality to tell you that it's all been a dream, ever since you defeated the Lich King. The "it's all a dream" ending is the best hope for WoW now.
I felt like I disliked Battle for Azeroth's ending a bit more. Not the Saurfang stuff that was fine. But the stuff with N'zoth? A villain I actually cared about? Wasn't happy with that. Shadowlands at the very least had some dialogue. Not the best dialogue but dialogue still.
Have to say, I really don't agree that Shadowlands's ending was worse than BFA. It's really bad, obviously, but at least it hints at something. There's a very low bar to clear, but it's hard to do worse than "hints at nothing and just destroys enthusiasm for Old Gods without even any dialogue."
Could it be Zovaal and the others are “robots” or creations of titans? Or even something else?
You already had me… Legion was amazing, but no… it's not even REMOTELY CLOSE to being better than WOTLK. Thumbs down bro, sorry man.
I personally feel cheated of 15 years of dedication, and I’m crushed. Heartbroken. This game was my hobby, my escape. This expansion has practically ruined that. 😔
I agree with your list, except that I would place the ending of WotLK at the top, just for the sheer emotional impact.
The ending of WoD is maybe the most tragic one, as it could have easily been made better by a pre-quest-chain having us allying with the remnants of the Iron Horde loyal to Grom and later a video inside the citadel showing him agree to peace with us.
Fury of the Sunwell didn't have a direct cinematic, but I think you completely missed the in game RP that was amazing with Velen reigniting the sunwell
Wrath was my least favorite, it's when they started catering heavily to casual and removed my favorite RPG elements. My guild quit when we finished the raid
So with the exception of legion wow has not had a good ending since 2013
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I know I'm going a bit "well akshually" here. But wasn't the ending of WotLK the Ruby Sanctum? They shoved in a final raid after ICC. While I too consider ICC the true ending of the expansion, the last one was Ruby Sanctum.
I feel like Legion got too much credit. It did pay off a build up that had been in the game for over a decade, but the payoff was more cool than impactful. Sargeras plunging the sword into the planet was cool, maybe even "epic," but it didn't really make me feel anything aside from that. The fall of Arthas had a weight to it that WoW has never managed to achieve again, because they have yet to add a character that was that compelling to that many people again since. Wrath takes the cake, and it's not even close (imo.)
Post Legion is just lame fanfic from egotistical muppets.
Only WOD is to far down, rest is fine. A bad ending >> no ending.
still holding out hope that visions of nzoth patch was just that, a vision nzoth wanted us to see and think he is dead when in reality he killed us and sent us to the shadowlands COPIUM black empire is back COPIUM dragon isles is the only uncorrupted place left which is why the expansion leak was called that COPIUM
As far as I'm concerned, Legion was the end of WoW. It was the last time I enjoyed the game and is a perfect capstone, in my head of the journey I started with warcraft as a kid. Fuck BfA and a bigger Fuck You to Shadowlands
You really mischaracterized the Sunwell ending here. After Kil’jaeden is defeated, there’s a non-cutscene interaction between Velen and Liadrin and the blood elves happens, where Velen re-ignites the Sunwell. It’s actually a beautiful ending to the Blood Elves’ redemption story in TBC. I also think that Quel’Danas was a great final zone. TBC was mostly about the blood elves. They’re on the box and drive a lot of the story. Not to mention the Kil’jaeden fight sets up his re-appearance in a Legion, and the Sunwell is heavily tied to Arthas, the next final villain of WoW.
The Jailer end cinematic should’ve been shown somewhere in 9.0
Would rank wotlk ending a bit higher then the legion's one, but can agree on all other positions.
My list was actually the exact same tbh, I went into this video thinking you would put epilogues into it as well the transitions to the next expansion with invasions and elemental attacks, but you based it off the clear end of the expansion and I was really happy with your list and explanations.
Best thing about shadowlands ending is that shadowlands is ending
Please do an overall ranking for each expansion.
I really hope that at the end of Shadowlands they will tell us that we actually lost to Nzoth and the whole Shadowlands thing was just a nightmare. Please Blizzard if you do that we will forgive you for making Shadowlands
Legion classic when?
Even thou' they murdered Voljin, still I love Legion's ending alot more than the LK one. LK was an ending to a character that was loved and they had to shoehorn in a 1-boss raid to somehow make the link between WotLK and Cataclysm.
In my view Draenor was worse than BFA. Other than that, I very much agree with the rankings. All of a sudden the Iron Horde were the good guys? That was just nonsense. BFA wasn‘t great but I‘ve never been so much invested into the Old God lore.
The only way to save shadowlands is that in epilogue Chromie shows up and say: "WOW, THAT IS HORRIBLE, LETS RESET IT!"
Wrath and MoP are my favorite expansions. I am looking forward to Wrath classic so much.
I also happen to be in the minority that actually enjoyed Cataclysm and Draenor. Conceptually speaking those two expansions were awesome. The revamped zones in Cata had great stories within them (And since I was like 12 at the time of Classic, I didn't have that much of an emotional attachment to how the world was before Cata, although that has changed a bit since Classic). And I thought WoD was awesome, again, conceptually. The Iron Horde and their leaders felt like a real threat. It just sucks so bad that they cut out the Shattrath raid and the whole South Western Ogre continent, which I think would've been just awesome as a patch area. And the leadup to Warlords with the trailers and dives into each of the Clan Leaders really set the stage for an expansion that felt different than anything that had come before. These people we would face were not supernatural beings, or hordes of undead lead by an embodiement of death and evil. But this was an invasion. The Iron Horde was going to war against our world.
As for Cata. I'm a D&D nerd. I like Dragons. Deathwing was a bit of a callback to the days of Vanilla where the design of the world was very D&D-esque. There's just something cool about being an 'adventurer' and taking down a really big, and really scary Dragon.
BFA was a good expansion storie wise and raids, the artifacts weapons where shit at the start but the fixed it and at the end it was a good expansion