House of Wolves had more content than any of the expansions including taken king. You felt rewarded when you got a weapon because you knew you could get the roll you wanted. The raid gear was worth grinding the raids for. All content from vanilla to dark below was also a viable option. The strike rotations included every strike and had some great guns in them. Exotics didn't come pouring in through a little coin and the bounties were difficult enough to make you feel that you earned them. Although the weapon meta was bad it wasn't nearly as bad as this mess we have now. Localized matchmaking meant you almost never had red bars on your team. Xur sold 5 heavy packs, instead of 3. No time gated quests that just artificially increased the life of the game by weeks. (Except elder cipher and some tdb quests) Overall you felt more rewarded. You knew once you got an etheric light the items light would be max and you didn't have to rely on rng. You had 3 sets of raid armor all max level. Your weapons were tailored to you because you didn't have to rely on rng for a good roll (because you were able to reroll it to get what you wanted) after you already waited through rng to get the thing. I miss house of wolves and the drive to play because "they surely won't mess up all this progress with taken king! They're going in the right direction" .... thanks for proving us all wrong again Actibungie Edit: Don't get me started on Nightfalls.... I forgot they were even a thing because of how badly they're implemented now. Back then you got your weekly exp buff and good rewards... it was either Strange coins, a legendary engram/weapon or an exotic. Now you get a ghost shell. Edit 2: To everyone who thinks I'm talking solely about poe or things added solely in HoW please consider that when I typed this I meant the state of destiny in its whole was at its peak during the time of HoW. I know it didn't have a raid and that PoE rewards were a joke. I was there too. Overall the systems in place and the rewards for every other activity were on point and just a lot better implemented.