Yeah, every expansion made the game worse on the whole, but Kunark was the best by far. Amazing zones and sense of adventure, and the new zones really were needed at the time, with the way server populations and game content was being handled. Most existing game areas had become much too overpopulated, and Kunark provided great new areas for the playerbase to flow into. The problem of Kunark is in the itemization and some game balance issues, and also just how damn long it took to level once you got to the mid 50's, which could feel frustrating.
I think the next best is Legacy of Ykesha, because it was the least disruptive to the game and did what they should have been doing the whole time - filling in zones on the actual Norrath map that weren't implemented yet (without instancing, ugh the stupid Lost Dungeons of Norrath) and introducing alterations to zones based on story events. Although the Frogloks taking over the Troll city had almost no actual impact on the game, it's very interesting to think about taking the concept further. Imagine if the original EQ cities were all raid zones, with major changes happening sporadically.
Velious is #3, it has some great ideas, but the game world is getting splintered up too much at this point, and the further power creep is part of the cause, since people people can just skip a ton of game content. The hugely increased HP of Velious mobs also can make things more tedious and introduces further balance issues.
I have no experience of expansions from Gates of Discord onward (aside from seeing some of the zones be repurposed in emulators)...how many people actually do? It's basically a dead question to ask what the top 5 expansions are. But I'm certain that plenty of the expansions released for the game over the years are better than the Planes of Power bullshit. From what I experienced some of, Luclin is #4 by default, because although I disliked most of the design there, at least it doesn't have fucking clickable teleportation stones all across the game and everyone beaming up into some random box in the sky. #5 is whatever, take your pick of whatever random expansion from 2005 onward, when the real Everquest was long gone, but when they were at least trying to again implement more Norrath-based zones.
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