You need expansion 1 and 2 in order to even buy The Taken King. You need all three of those in order to buy Rise of Iron. If you never upgraded to The Taken King you lost access to multiple difficulties of Vanguard strikes, the ability to chose what crucible game type you wanted to play, Nightfall, Trials of Osiris, daily story missions and crucible, and Iron Banner. Everyone other game would have had separate playlist options for people with various amounts of DLC, Destiny says "Give us money or stop playing".