Shadowlands Turns One, WoW Turns 17! Expansion Duration Rankings

1. Battle for Azeroth

Perhaps we will see a replay of the above in the Anduin raid encounter?

2 Years, 3 Months, 9 Days (832 Days Total)

We see BfA at the top here, outstripping the long-time record holder Vanilla by quite a bit. The expansion was certainly a controversial one, and started the current Sylvanas-centric storyline we've been on for over 3 years now, with its resolution only months away. In my opinion BfA squandered a lot of potentially good storylines, Azshara and N'Zoth in particular (and even the faction conflict could have been done much better), but it wasn't all bad and some players are looking back at it more fondly after the year of Shadowlands we've had.

2. Vanilla WoW

2 Years, 1 Month, 24 Days (784 Days Total)

The one that started it all, was even remade as WoW Classic, and is actually currently running as the Season of Mastery. If we added all of those together, Vanilla would still be the longest running piece of WoW content to date, and presuming Classic Era realms continue indefinitely, it will always be! We can't really compare this one to the others, as it's the one that started it all and will stand on its own forever. Happy 17th birthday!

3. Mists of Pandaria

2 Years, 1 Month, 18 Days (778 Days Total)

While it was a controversial expansion at the time (due to to the perceived children-friendly theme/pandas), today it is very much looked upon as one of WoW's highlights. Throne of Thunder and Lei Shen in particular are still considered some of the best raid content to date, and the expansion's aesthetic was praised even when the expansion was not, only receiving more compliments since. I'll admit, I was one of the Panda-skippers, as it's one of only two expansions I skipped almost in their entirety (I'll let you guess which the other one was), but have enjoyed it very much since then.

4. Wrath of the Lich King

2 Years, 24 Days (754 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. The story is very tightly connected to today's Shadowlands one, and some still hope to see Arthas one more time (which is fairly possible come 9.2). WotLK will probably go down as the high watermark in many players' memories, and it was factually the time when the game had the most players.

5. Legion

1 Year, 11 Months, 14 Days (714 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. With its extremely generous amount of content, Suramar as possibly the peak of intertwined zone and story design, and a... ahem, "passable" ending (no, I can't forgive random Sargeras cloud out of nowhere, no matter how awesome the cinematic was), it's still definitely one of WoW's best.

6. The Burning Crusade

1 Year, 9 Months, 28 Days (667 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. It also opened the doors to so many retcons, space goats on spaceships and all. I still love it very much, as it was my favorite time in the game, and it's also currently going on over in Classic!

7. Cataclysm

1 Year, 9 Months, 18 Days (658 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. Spine of Deathwing may be one of the most frustrating raid encounters to date as well (although it's also still one of the best ideas ever).

8. Warlords of Draenor

1 Year, 9 Months, 17 Days (656 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. Warlords being right next to Shadowlands here is very appropriate, as we're seeing the same pattern happening today - as the current expansion is also being cut short in favor of the next one.

9. Shadowlands

1 Year (365 Days Total)