Rank the Expansion Packs (1-10)

[Tumideon]

S-Tier

• Mists of Ravenloft: Just everything about this pack is pretty much perfect, other than the start and stop between quests zoning back to the whatever NPC you're with. I purposely don't zerg these because the atmosphere is hostile and awesome. The music score, especially the combat music, is damned good. The voice acting is amazing, the guy who does Invitation, TCOS, and Strahd himself voices a villain in one of my kid's favorite shows so it's fun hearing that. The loot is still good to this day, the XP is really good, and it keeps you from needing to run Twilight Forge flaggers. I don't play PnP, so idk how like the module it is, but the lore and worldbuilding are really damn cool and I am glad we don't find out who the Dark Masters or whatever those dudes are. Also, the fact we can get Named Items in optional chests is something that should come back, having multiple cracks at named items makes it easier to finding loot let alone Reaper/Mythic affixed versions! Also, Amber Temple got reworked so with TS/DSD you can run that in 5 mins flat, really great QOL.

A-Tier

• Masterminds of Sharn: Honestly, who doesn't run this from 17-20 (if not sooner?). Most of the quests are fast, the story is pretty cool especially when you trace it back to the Beacon being stolen. I never do the OG flagger under the sea though, hate that one. The quests are all in the same areas, the Cogs is a fun wilderness area albeit a bit annoying to run around. Soul Splitter, I'm not sure if it was part of the Expansion proper is also really cool, seeing some old characters come back, and adding MORE sets to use at 17 which is spectacular. Easy crafting system, easy loot, some BiS stuff still around and I actually like the Syranian and other Named weapons too like Moonslice. Some of the quests do drag, but the final one where you slime out Vaunt is still satisfying even to this day.
• Chill of Ravenloft: I personally love the setting here, kind of feels like Arcanum meets Frankenstein. The story beats feel really good, great voice acting, though I wish they learned a bit more into the paranormal/supernatural like in Mists of Ravenloft, they tried to do it a bit with A Light In the Attic. Best combat music in the damn game, fun short Raid that reminds me of VoD and HoX, and while I still haven't built a set out it's nice getting Sun/Moon Augs and mats in every optional chest - wish we had more of that. The wilderness is super oppressive, maybe too many grays, but I enjoyed it and can run the quests fast but since mats and loot drop in optional chests I don't mind.
• ***Terror of Demogorgon: I reserve the right to change my mind, I've already ran the chain 3 times and watched a few other livestreams from Strim to see how it is for other play styles. Some of the loot is pretty cool, I like that Sharn "nearly finished" came back and I REALLY like the ability to take old classic DDO (launch & Module system) and MOTU loot and improve it further, though the Catalysts needing to exactly match is a bit stupid. The Slime Ball secret is cool, but I fear it'll be another Nebula Fragment and not really used much beyond those new weapons. The story feels proper, on Heroic it falls short having an uber toon absolutely tear the demon lords apart on R1, but the wilderness is beautiful. Great music, great voice acting, SSG even brought back quests you can use stealth in! I like the rebalancing to Banishing, feels really nice on a high crit-range build. The quests being so close to each other and having teleports available is sweet, and Elite/R1 for farming Slayers is also a great touch. Looking forward to seeing how the Raid goes, also interested if we're ever gonna address Forgotten Realms Duregar versus the rando Duregar in Atraxia/TOTSH?
• Fables of the Feywild: The lead into the Vecna story arc, and something different as far as a landscape. I thinks it's beautiful, the art really nailed it. Has enough whimsical elements but still take it serious, I felt I could relate to GoatBoy Hrysam in some ways the story was enjoyable. The LOOT is outstanding, can carry you to 15 and I still wear that Crown of Butterflies well into epics when I used to be on the ETR pipeline. The wilderness is a bit large for what it is and quiet barren, I hate having to go from the swamp to the snow (or vice versa) on the first chain but it's great XP and keeps me out of Three Barrel Cove which I despise. Raids are really fun, the music is pretty good but not my taste per se.

B-Tier

• Isle of Dread: There are a few stinkers in here, but the setting is awesome. The voice acting is a bit weak, and Vecna's audio is super low in most quests, but it's a decently cool story with a tedious wilderness area - so I don't get how people complain about Myth when IOD feels just as big. Dinosaurs are well done, I hated the crafting when it came out, but it's grown on me and I am glad I never farmed out LGS so I feel less bad. Some really great caster gear at level 7, and having a set to mix with Feywild is really nice too (Profane and Artifact). Other than Stone Crypt Chronicle, I enjoy the quests themselves per life, though I prefer it on Heroic.
• Myth Drannor: I put this a lot higher than most folks, I had left the game shortly after it came out in frustration with yet another rare-drop system and having hit triple-uber completionist after I did the Chaosmancer/Wild Mage. Some of the most beautiful music in the whole game, and the storyline is really well done, definitely didn't see it coming like Chill of Ravenloft. That said, I've gotten good luck running it lately, plenty of Golden Age weapons (1-2 per run) and I've gotten the rare armor as well. Goggles of the Archer/Zerker are some of my favorite for Racial TR toons since I only ever run Barb or Inqui (and some Warlock). Yes, the area is huge but you know what so is Ravenloft and IOD - I think that for sure SSG should just add teleporters and people will play it again. The raid was pretty fun, and other than the end of Chain 1, you can blow through the quests, I know the Safehold gets some crap for all of the glyphs you need but it is not that bad. The new take on A Mirror Darkly was well done, but after 5+ runs I still need to have the Wiki up to do it lol - I'm sure it'll get Amber Temple treatment eventually.

C-Tier

• Menace of the Underdark: Knowing the context of when this came out, I get why it was the way it was done. Endgame had went from doing 20 completions of Shroud, to ToD, and then CITW. I think I have more CITW gear from Raider Boxes than from running the raid itself. It's become an ETR staple for the Saga, the storyline and the way that Turbine at the time was able to get FR and Eberron put together was well done, and King's Forest and the Demonweb still hold up visually. The quests are still a bit of a slog, even with the various stat crunches. I really REALLY wish we'd get a pass on that loot though, other than Celestia there is nothing worth having in that ENTIRE storyline. Eveningstar is beautiful, the Demonweb quests are a lot of fun, and I like running LOD still to this day. But getting around is terrible, and some of the quests just cant be zerged for xp/min. Glad I'm done with ETRs.
• Sinister Secrets of Saltmarsh: I used to run this every HTR/RTR life, but with newer content like Night Brigade I don't do it much anymore. It's worth farming sets for some gear especially if you don't have Feywild, but it's the best 20 gear out there just about. The Hay drops everywhere which is nice, Flamesalt weapons are decent. The storyline is campy, and I get it's part of the Codex War mythos in DDO, but doesn't feel high stakes. Great, the lizard people and the "Definitely not the Morsemen" are fighting? Who cares. That said, running Slayers and Rares is fun. Wish we had more to do with the Nebula Fragments, and that the Minor Artifacts were nicer. No Raid did suck, it would be cool having another lowbie raid like Chrono added in but doubt it. Danger at Dunwater isn't fun even running it optimally, so it's not something I will do much anymore now that I have just about everything.

D-Tier

• Shadowfell Conspiracy: *Deep breath*. This has NOT aged well at all, when it came out I am pretty sure this was one of the first (of many) stat-crunch-rug-pull. I absolutely love the lore, but, the setting is terrible and the quests are terrible. I have not ran these since they came out. No good loot, decent storyline, but just a slog and not at all fun. If it was not for Night Brigade, I would never step foot in Wheelon other than on a new Iconic life that ends up there.

F-Tier

• Vecna Unleashed: God, what a let down, what a disaster. After we had hits like Feywild and then IOD, and then we got this crap. Why they put it at heroic cap is beyond me, I get it was meant to run Legendary but I would've rather have gotten Legendary Threnal or Legendary Sorrowdusk and worked Vecna in there. He is barely present, Morgrave is boring as hell. The pre-launch quests as sort of a continuation of the Planar Eyes were alright, I have a glammered Red Scale Armor from the Mabar quest which is the only one I run. The loot is forgettable without a set bonus (***!) If this was a new Epic 20 line and not heroic (just Epic/Legendary) would've made it a lot more palatable but I didn't even run the Raid. I paid for the Ultimate Edition too, oops lol.

 

[Stein]

Mists of Ravenloft 9/10 - I really love the atmosphere, Barovia is a great wilderness zone, it has a good raid, the music and writing are both very good, and it manages to take the worst parts of the book and other adaptations and throw them out (Mostly dialing down how creepy the Tatyana stuff can get in the books and in other game versions they've done, I find it to be distasteful.). Castle Ravenloft is one of the best thematic quests in the game, Death House is perhaps one of the most emotional quests in the game. The only downsides are that I hate Amber Temple. Also, the meme power level is off the charts (NO MORE PIES!).

Chill of Ravenloft 9/10 - Similarly to Mists, this has overall really excellent art direction, it has an ideal wilderness zone, it has great audio design, writing, environments, music. There's only one quest I don't really like, and the hub zone is extremely fun to just run around in. I also personally like the crafting system because I'm a skinner box freak, so I don't mind the enormous grind. Similarly, this takes all the good parts of Ravenloft with none of the bad.

Feywild 9/10 - Outstanding, it's soooo good. The visuals, the audio design, the quest design, a narrative with a complex antagonist who is actually interesting to think about and watch. It has a quest or two i'd rather skip, but it has so much great voice acting, such good vibes, and also the music is just oustanding like all around. Feywild is how to execute on a whimsical idea while remaining true to the spirit of D&D and engrossing your players in something they might otherwise dislike or think is too childish. SSG knocked it out of the park with this.

Sharn 7/10 - Amazing aesthetic, plus I think Eberron is a better setting than literally any other setting D&D has. This one has a lot of good quests plus it has a LOT of content. It has good gear, it doesn't make you grind as much, and it has great vibes. It has good sound design. But unlike the above, it has issues. Some of the voice acting here is some of the worst in the game by far. Hiring loser influencers with baggage and drama like Phoenix and her buddies genuinely drags this experience down a lot. The quest with the singing is insufferable, it's genuinely really outstandingly bad to the point I don't even like running it once a life. If I could force them to re-record these with professional voice actors I would bump it up to like a 9. Ironically, Keith Baker, the least trained voice actor of all, is the best of the non-professionals because he wrote a lot of this stuff and he obviously loves eberron. Also, The Cogs is really terrible. It's huge, it's overly vertical, pack density of horrendous, and it's just so insanely poorly visualized. This expansion IS good, but it could have been great.

Isle of Dread 7/10 I personally don't really like dinosaurs. I didn't grow up with the dinosaur loving gene, so all this stuff just goes over my head. But the story is actually pretty good if you pay attention and I like the wilderness zone because it's really nice to look at while you run around. It has good outdoor bosses and good quest design, and some surprisingly banger music. This is Vecna actually at his best, really spooky and dangerous. It's held back by not having THAT much content really, dino bone crafting being (now) mostly superseded doesn't help it, and I haven't done its raid, so I can't really say if it's good or not. I like it, but I don't love it.

Sharn 6/10 - Amazing aesthetic, plus I think Eberron is a better setting than literally any other setting D&D has. This one has a lot of good quests plus it has a LOT of content. It has good gear, it doesn't make you grind as much, and it has great vibes. It has good sound design. But unlike the above, it has issues. Some of the voice acting here is some of the worst in the game by far. Hiring loser influencers with baggage and drama like Phoenix and her buddies genuinely drags this experience down a lot. The quest with the singing is insufferable, it's genuinely really outstandingly bad to the point I don't even like running it once a life. If I could force them to re-record these with professional voice actors I would bump it up to like a 9. Ironically, Keith Baker, the least trained voice actor of all, is the best of the non-professionals because he wrote a lot of this stuff and he obviously loves eberron. Also, The Cogs is really terrible. It's huge, it's overly vertical, pack density of horrendous, and it's just so insanely poorly visualized. This expansion IS good, but it could have been great.

Vecna Unleashed 6/10 - The only actually decent min-expansion imo. It has fun quests with one or two exceptions, the voice work is very good, morgrave is a really good setting. But it's let down by being really short and small with no wilderness zone. It might have a lot of good elements but you can't overlook that it's a very "unfinished" concept that just doesn't end up landing like it needed to for what was essentially "DDO: Endwalker"

Myth Drannor - 6/10 I feel like I'm being a bit harsh on this because I think I like it more than I like Vecna, but less than I like Sharn. It has an all time bad wilderness zone (but that zone has good visuals? It's just too big by a factor of like 60%.) and while it has a lot of quests I struggle to really remember most of them. Very overall boring in the way that pure forgotten realms content often is. It's bog-standard western fantasy without a real standout moment or hook. It does have very good art though, SSG did a great job on that part. It's not bad, it just isn't great.

Below here is stuff I actively dislike. I actually don't blame SSG for most of thos bc it was done long before the current team and is mostly "wow, turbine was a bad studio"

Saltmarsh 5/10 - This one is on SSG, though. Boring wilderness, not enough content, story is ??? who cares tier, and it only has a few good quests (I love the quest with the old-style map though, 9/10 for that 20 minutes). It's a low level and thus low stakes place and I just think it wasn't a good enough concept to even be a mini expansion. No raid, either. Meh.

Shadowfell 4/10 I don't even know what I can say about this. It's so... Nothing. It's boring, it's old and dated in the worst way. It didn't have enough content then, it has some truly horrendous voice acting (the dwarves, please god shut uppppp) and it has loot that is so bad it actually offends me. If I had actively played and bought this expansion there is no doubt I would have quit.

MOTU 2/10 It's like shadowfell but worse, holy smokes. Elminster is one of the worst characters in D&D fiction, he is the absolute embodiment of a character I never want to see. He's insufferable, he's mandatorily plot relevent, he's all over the place and he is just way too meta-important to ever be likable. To me he is Gandalf with none of the charm or personality, he is the absolute pits. He's been in like 70 books and none of them were ever good. And Lolth is terminally boring. The one moment that is cool is her breaking into Eberron, but then you get into the raid which is bad, boring, and has maybe some of the worst voice acting in all of DDO. I hate it, it turns me into the IT STINKS guy from the simpsons every tine I have to run it. Its only redeeming quality is that the last quest in the flying mountain zone is very cool, but also very, very annoying.

Oh, and I actually haven't done the new expansion yet, but I think I'll probably like it!

 

[axemania]

My personal rankings:

1. Isle of dread. Has a great vibe. Quests are fun and not too long. Plus, dinosaurs!!! That actually look half decent!!!
2. Masterminds of Sharn. Good EXP at a valuable level, great items, fun theme.
3. Mists of Ravenloft. Would be higher due to sheer convenience of doing the quests but I'm tired of Barovia after like a decade of Curse of Strahd being the only WOTC adventure for 5e that actually delivers on its promise. Also I always get lost in the castle.
4. Magic of Myth Drannor. Yes it's a lot of running around the wilderness but it's super pretty, the gear is awesome, the quests are fun (yes, even times long past, I like times long past), and the raid is fun. Would be higher if not for the skulls I always have trouble targeting that obliterate my HP.
5. Vecna Unleashed. Valuable EXP area if you're not super careful with plotting out your quests-at-level, quests are mostly good (screw that doggy escort quest tho), raid is fun. Good items too at least while leveling.
6. Fables of the Feywild. Only reason this isn't higher is that there's a lot of low level quests. But the quests are fun and don't have annoying mechanics, the landscape is pretty, and it's not too hard to navigate. Also, feytwisted chests are fun when they drop and the raid is fun.
7. Chill of Ravenloft. Love the story (You can't fix her, girly pop!), theme is fun even if the visuals get kinda bland on the landscape. Raid is cool even though I keep getting destroyed every group I try it with lol.
8. Saltmarsh. Takes a while to run to the quests, less of an overarching plot thread or cool theme. Not super valuable EXP wise while leveling, but decent in epics.
9. Menace of the Underdark. Too many annoying mechanics, Underdark is a PITA to navigate, king's forest is huge and not well-populated with monsters, epic only, doesn't get run as much these days, annoying flagging mechanics.
10. Shadowfell Conspiracy. I play it a lot, but I will never not be annoyed at the shadar-kai.

Adding Demogorgon:

1. Isle of Dread, because dinosaurs.
2. Terror of Demogorgon. Would be #1 if it had dinosaurs. Gorgeous wilderness, little small maybe but that's more than made up for by people not whining about the trek across the wilderness to the quests. Excellent leveling gear. Great endgame loot. Lots of fun.
3. Masterminds of Sharn.
4. Mists of Ravenloft, still dinged because I'm tired of Barovia.
5. Myth D
6. Chill of Ravenloft--been playing it more and enjoying it more and more, kicks Vecna down a tad.
7. Feywild--still dinged because there's a lot at its level ranges but it's fun and has few annoying BS mechanics and is pretty.
8. Vecna. It's very useful and makes my last couple heroic levels less of a slog without needing to drink sov pots like water, but otoh I do get bored of running the same like 5 quests over and over. Also, I hate the doggy escort. the raid is still good tho!
9. Saltmarsh.
10. MOTU. Loot being outdated now also an issue tbh.
11. Shadowfell Conspiracy: I continue to hate the shadarkai mobs more than anything else in the game. They're like demonic spiders or something. SO annoying!

 

[MarauderX]

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