wow Battle for Azeroth Turns 2, All World of Warcraft Expansion Durations

[Starym 3,800]

 

Happy second birthday to Battle for Azeroth! The current expansion has been very controversial and contentious, but it did experiment with quite a few new concepts that didn't make a fair portion of the player base happy, which they made very clear, and hopefully those interactions will make the game as a whole better in the future. The many layers of RNG were the biggest issue with players in BfA, as well as the massive alt-unfriendlyness aspect, and the story to a certain extent, but the many new power systems introduced do show a willingness for experimentation, which can only be a good thing in the long run. WoW Classic is also only 12 days away from it's first birthday.

As BfA turns two today, it's getting close to being the longest-running expansion since WoW's inception , so let's take a look at just how close it is. Here are all the expansions durations, as well as the base game for comparison:

0. Vanilla WoW

2 Years, 1 Month, 24 Days (785 Days Total)

The one that started it all, and was even remade as WoW Classic.

1. Mists of Pandaria

2 Years, 1 Month, 19 Days (780 Days Total)

A somewhat controversial expansion, as some players deemed it to be too childish, but it turned out to be one of WoW's best to date.
 

2. Wrath of the Lich King

2 Years, 25 Days (755 Days Total)

Many players' favorite period in WoW, WotLK was the first expansion to push a very strong story narrative and focus on the final villain throughout the entire expansion, giving the final confrontation atop Icecrown Citadel a lot more weight.
 

3*. Battle for Azeroth

2 Years (731 Days Total), Ongoing
 

4. Legion

1 Year, 11 Months, 15 Days (715 Days Total)

Standing alongside Wrath of the Lich King, this is most players' favorite WoW expansion, as we saw the culmination of the Burning Legion storyline unfold.
 

5. The Burning Crusade

1 Year, 9 Months, 29 Days (668 Days Total)

The first ever expansion, it opened up so many new avenues for the game to go in, and showed us how to fly in World of Warcraft.
 

6. Cataclysm

1 Year, 9 Months, 19 Days (659 Days Total)

While revamping the old world was a brilliant move, the expansion itself wasn't that popular, with a rather anticlimactic ending in the Dragon Soul raid.
 

7. Warlords of Draenor

1 Year, 9 Months, 17 Days (657 Days Total)

As a large part of WoD was scrapped, we never got to see the expansion as it was intended, but the introduction to player housing through garrisons was very welcome, and is definitely one of the ideas that should be iterated on come future expansions.
 

WoW Classic is at 354 days, but technically isn't an expansion, so it doesn't get an entry, but it does make an interesting question to see when (if?) Classic TBC might be coming and how long it could last!

 

So, the expansion winner is Mists of Pandaria, only 5 days away from beating Vanilla's record, with WotLK in second place 25 days behind. Meanwhile, BfA is only 50 days away from beating MoP, 54 from Vanilla, starting today, and will almost certainly become the longest running WoW period in history, unless Shadowlands surprises us and comes out before mid-September.

And there we have it, we did some timewalking ourselves and took a look at the real numbers behind the expansions, as they most certainly differ from what it felt like while playing those same expansions  - who would have thought WoD was the shortest expansion (despite it only having 2 major content patches, that post 6.2 period felt like an eternity)! As we look forward to Shadowlands we can see the expansions generally do conform to the 2-year period, with some 3-4 month exceptions. Whether that's the correct amount of time, given enough content, or if we'll see some changes in the future, perhaps longer individual expansion times with more patches in them, remains to be seen.

As BfA turns 2, we take a look at all the expansion and Vanilla durations and compare them!

[FourEyedFoxie 17]

i have a lovely spread sheet of expansion start and end dates, prepatches, alpha and beta, release date announcements etc ? 

[Yojiro 30]

52 minutes ago, Starym said:

A somewhat controversial expansion, as some players deemed it to be too childish, but it turned out to be one of WoW's best to date.

In my experience all the people I've met that call MoP childish or "lol pandas" when I ask for their opinion on the brutality of war theme of the expac their response is "Oh I don't know I just heard about it"

[Dejo93 1,023]

Is it true that two different development teams work on WoW? Might explain the fluctuating expansion quality. Think about it

Cata: bad

MoP: good

WoD: bad

Legion : good

BfA: bad

SL should be at this logic pretty good. What do you guys think?

[Migol 433]

To be fair, WoD's 3rd part was scrapped...BFA's 3rd part was "almost" scrapped, 8.3's obviously a complete rushjob with the reuse of old zones complete with old herbs/minerals forcing professions to stick with 8.2 farming zones.     A barebones ending cinematic, and an incredibly unbalanced Corruption system that even after multiple nerfs is still a broken system.      Pretty clear blizzard only didn't skip 8.3 entirely because of the backlash from WoD, but they came as close as they could.

[Starym 3,800]

28 minutes ago, Yojiro said:

In my experience all the people I've met that call MoP childish or "lol pandas" when I ask for their opinion on the brutality of war theme of the expac their response is "Oh I don't know I just heard about it"

Well I was certainly one of those that avoided it at launch because it was so clearly pandering to the younger crowd, so I disagree there. I still believe/know that was the case, but they managed to pull off a good expansion anyway (it's still one of my less favorite ones though, even though I respect it for a really great piece of gaming in general, just not my cup of tea personally).

[Starym 3,800]

23 minutes ago, Dejo93 said:

Is it true that two different development teams work on WoW? Might explain the fluctuating expansion quality. Think about it

Cata: bad

MoP: good

WoD: bad

Legion : good

BfA: bad

SL should be at this logic pretty good. What do you guys think?

I think it's much simpler than that. They burn out on the good expansions and put everything they have into it then it's human anture to do worse work after that. Pretty standard stuff tbh. And yea, I also think SL will be awesome. If it's Legion level I'll be thrilled.

[Aernath 173]

Nice statistical information, but it should also be considered that ending patch durations of each expansion relatively defined the likeability of that expansion; if the ending patch was there for a long time, especially without fun catch-up additions, then mostly players got bored of those and now they are remembered bad. That detail had a huge effect on overall impression of an expansion.

[Starym 3,800]

3 minutes ago, Aernath said:

Nice statistical information, but it should also be considered that ending patch durations of each expansion relatively defined the likeability of that expansion; if the ending patch was there for a long time, especially without fun catch-up additions, then mostly players got bored of those and now they are remembered bad. That detail had a huge effect on overall impression of an expansion.

I guess that only applies to people who kept playing. Personally (and most people I know) take a break when those end of expansion times come and come back at pre-patch or the new expo.

[Seksi 208]

While Warlords is often maligned, it had some of the very best end bosses ever in WoW.

Margok, Blackhand (perhaps still to date the shortest final boss fight in WoW, every second on that fight counted, my favorite so far!) and WoD Archimonde.

Wish there had been more raids ? but the 3 we got were all great!

[Yojiro 30]

35 minutes ago, Aernath said:

Nice statistical information, but it should also be considered that ending patch durations of each expansion relatively defined the likeability of that expansion; if the ending patch was there for a long time, especially without fun catch-up additions, then mostly players got bored of those and now they are remembered bad. That detail had a huge effect on overall impression of an expansion.

This is also true for more specific parts of expansions, best example is Wrath of the Lich King, you still hear people today talk about how "easy" the heroic dungeons were even though at the intended point they weren't as easy as people claim but simply not as overly punishing as BC heroics were, the problem is that like you mentioned people mostly remember the later parts of the expansion where they were indeed a complete joke after so many tiers of raiding and levels of gear. 

 

47 minutes ago, Starym said:

Well I was certainly one of those that avoided it at launch because it was so clearly pandering to the younger crowd, so I disagree there. I still believe/know that was the case, but they managed to pull off a good expansion anyway (it's still one of my less favorite ones though, even though I respect it for a really great piece of gaming in general, just not my cup of tea personally).

Maybe the trailer or announcement felt that way but I mean the prepatch had a nuke being dropped on theramore

[Ravenclaw89 27]

1 hour ago, Dejo93 said:

Is it true that two different development teams work on WoW? Might explain the fluctuating expansion quality. Think about it

Cata: bad

MoP: good

WoD: bad

Legion : good

BfA: bad

SL should be at this logic pretty good. What do you guys think?

I AM A BELIEVER OF THIS THEORY! 

[thurk 52]

3 hours ago, Dejo93 said:

Is it true that two different development teams work on WoW? Might explain the fluctuating expansion quality. Think about it

Cata: bad

MoP: good

WoD: bad

Legion : good

BfA: bad

SL should be at this logic pretty good. What do you guys think?

There is no way any company would intentionally retain a team that was less successful.  They would either be fired, or the two teams would be combined and massaged to create 2 strong teams - the bad team will only stay bad if they work with each other; by working with a "good team" they will improve.  Software companies are particularly agile, so even more reason to split a bad team up.

I think it's like Starym says, except it's about players as much as developers.  Legion was really good, especially toward the end of it - so when they took away all the things that made Legion great, they predisposed players to a negative reaction.  (If they had simply played the Azerite system before releasing it, the core, initial flaw of the expansion (having to re-earn traits when you got an upgrade) would have been softened, and the reception would've been better.)  There are natural ebbs and flows in public opinion, and I suspect we're just seeing smaller weaknesses grow under the microscope.  

And, of course, confirmation bias.  People have been saying this A-team/B-team thing for a long time.  I think BFA was screwed from the start just because of that.

 

Different topic:

4 hours ago, Starym said:

As a large part of WoD was scrapped, we never got to see the expansion as it was intended,

I didn't play WoD - what did they scrap, and why?  Are there any narratives around that would explain what happened for people who weren't there?

[thurk 52]

2 hours ago, Yojiro said:

This is also true for more specific parts of expansions, best example is Wrath of the Lich King,

Also, while new-Naxx was fun I guess, it was rehashed, and not that interesting - it didn't really make sense in the lore why the exact same raid came back, it was very obviously them trying to get more mileage out of a raid not many people got to see - and there's nothing strictly wrong with that, but when you compare it to Karazhan (the previous expansion's opening raid), it was garbage. 

But then Ulduar came, one of the best raids ever.  Then there was the Argent Tournament, that dungeon, and that raid, which were all boring af.  Then ICC, another one of the best raids ever.

And Legion was like that too.  I liked EN, but a lot of people didn't.  But then Nighthold was *so good*.  The time-gating in Suramar, Broken Shore, and Argus were super annoying - Broken Shore being the worst offender.  But then there was the mage tower and mythic plus - possibly the best additions to WoW since, like, ever.  Legion Legendaries - until you could buy them - were the most alt-unfriendly game systems, like, ever.

BFA had some great high points and super low points, too.  I didn't play MoP or WoD, but every expansion that I played was like that - highs and lows.  I think it's a mistake to talk about expansions as "good" or "bad" - unless you're talking about financial success - which is more about how spread out the highs and lows are, and how quickly they repair the bad stuff.  *That* is what BFA did badly.

Of course, BFA's Sylvanas storyline was so dumb.  Remember when Vol'jin told Sylvanas on his deathbed that the spirits said she was going to save the horde?  How are they gonna retcon that?  So dumb.

[Yojiro 30]

13 minutes ago, thurk said:

Remember when Vol'jin told Sylvanas on his deathbed that the spirits said she was going to save the horde?  How are they gonna retcon that?  So dumb.

Isn't there a questline where Vol'jin suddenly claims it wasn't "da spirits" but something "much darker" where you have to go talk to Bwonsamdi and the Lich King and ask like an idiot if they were the ones who told him to make Sylvanas the leader of the horde (I can't stop laughing at the idea of you going around with Vol'jin asking strong beings "uh hey, hey did you do this?"  I like to imagine Vol'Jin motioning behind you like "please say yes otherwise this *filtered*'s on me")

Anyway I guess the implication is that The Jailer is the one who somehow told Vol'jin in a vision to make her warchief

Edited August 14, 2020 by Yojiro

[durdyenglish 298]

4 hours ago, Yojiro said:

Isn't there a questline where Vol'jin suddenly claims it wasn't "da spirits" but something "much darker" where you have to go talk to Bwonsamdi and the Lich King and ask like an idiot if they were the ones who told him to make Sylvanas the leader of the horde (I can't stop laughing at the idea of you going around with Vol'jin asking strong beings "uh hey, hey did you do this?"  I like to imagine Vol'Jin motioning behind you like "please say yes otherwise this *filtered*'s on me")

Anyway I guess the implication is that The Jailer is the one who somehow told Vol'jin in a vision to make her warchief

Yea Vol'jin as a ghost explains him being almost dead sorta clouded his vision of things.

[durdyenglish 298]

4 hours ago, thurk said:

Different topic:

I didn't play WoD - what did they scrap, and why?  Are there any narratives around that would explain what happened for people who weren't there?

Not a huge fan of the site but this is a good list of stuff that was cut:

https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/1874264-A-collection-of-all-known-cut-delayed-content-in-Warlords-of-Draenor

[Odi 10]

On 8/14/2020 at 10:30 PM, thurk said:

Of course, BFA's Sylvanas storyline was so dumb.  Remember when Vol'jin told Sylvanas on his deathbed that the spirits said she was going to save the horde?  How are they gonna retcon that?  So dumb.

I know it is a bit off topic, but was it ever revealed what was the bargain between Sylvanas and Helya in Legion?