An expansion a year? Blizzard says "we'll try."
by Elizabeth Harper 
Mar 16th 2007 at 5:31PM
On the forums, poster Alorn asks when we're going to see a preview of the next expansion -- since, after all, Blizzard has told us that they're planning on having yearly expansions. Next January is only 10 months away, and we had previews of the Burning Crusade well in advance of 10 months to release. To this question Nethaera replies that Blizzard has not claimed they'll be producing yearly expansions -- but instead that they "wanted to try" to release an expansion a year. This sounds a bit different from what Blizzard COO Paul Sams told GamesIndusrtry.biz back in August, when he said:
Starting with The Burning Crusade, every year thereafter we plan on bringing out a new expansion set - so every 12 months.
Though I suppose "we plan" is different from "we will," and we can go back to Blizzard's usual "when it's ready" release date strategy.
Filed under: Blizzard, News items, Expansions
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Dro Mar 16th 2007 5:41PM
While that seems a bit disheartening, I seriously doubt it will be like Duke Nukem Forever.
Even if they don't hit the yearly mark, I'm guessing they will be close (Or maybe even early. Wouldn't that be nice?).
But who knows?
Shat Mar 16th 2007 6:18PM
You've gotta admit, the "when it's ready" strategy has yet to produce a sub-par game.
Blacksabre Mar 16th 2007 6:31PM
Now, if we push Blizz on this...we will get a CM post, prolly from Drysc, saying that while BC was released in mid-January, it was not fully "implemented and stable" until early March, with the release of V2.0.10.644, and so we should not be expecting to see anything new, expansionwise, until Spring of 2008, at the earliest.
It helps to speak Blizzard-ese.
Black
Dark Yoshi Mar 16th 2007 6:33PM
@2: "A bad game is bad forever, but a delayed game is eventually good." ~Shigeru Miyamoto
Anyway, onto the topic. Blizz won't take longer than a year and a half for releasing this, all I want are some announcements and information about it.
Hop to it, Blizz!
MindTrigger Mar 16th 2007 6:34PM
Yeah, well this hardly addresses the fact that people are cruising through Burning Crusade in a very short amount of time because it's to easy. I'm guessing most of the 7-8 million players are casual, so once they hid 70 and get bored and fed up trying to get involved with end game, they will start moving on. I've already lost a bunch of friends who are tired of the lack of depth and social features. I plan to bail as soon as I hit 70 and it feels even the slightest bit boring. I'm at 67 now, so I give myself about a month, maybe 2.
jdmdrew Mar 16th 2007 6:49PM
I honestly think a new expansion a year would be too much. I have been playing a short time and I am already overwhelmed with the task of obsorbing all the content in the game w/ out tBC. A new expansion a year would really shun off new users. This would be different if I had 4 high level characters and have been playing for years, but at as a noob it would be frustrating
Usul Mar 16th 2007 6:51PM
First, I think its a bit presumptuous to assume every post on the community forums in a blue colored font are official press releases from the company itself.
Additionally...I'm not so sure that every twelve months would even be a good thing.
Blizzard has already said they are working on Black Temple. They are also constantly making in game adjustments and tweaks that we could all just "live with" instead of addressing them. All in all, their commitment to keeping my 15 dollars a month has been pretty substantial.
I don't know about you, but I am willing to bet that about 9 out of every 10 people in the game right now have yet to get "too much" of the Burning Crusade content. I'm also fairly certain that even 12 months from now, that number will have improved by about 10%.
Not all of us are in guilds like Death and Taxes. Not all of us will have BT on Farm Status before a snowy Christmas day in 2007.
18 months might be even better. But if the content release is as substantial as BC...then even the 24 month anniversary of BC would be acceptable...provided we continue to see new aspects introduced and seeded as we have before.
Ampersand Mar 16th 2007 7:15PM
Its the same old word war that blizzard has been waging since the start of WoW. They say one thing to shut us up, then when we call them out on what they said, they play the 12 y.o. word games saying 'nuh uhhh, thats not what I said'.
Anyone playing WoW should know by now not to trust anything about what you hear or read until you see it happen.
They have 10 months to put out an expansion based on the information they told us they were 'planning' to do. Based upon how long it took them to produce BC, I don't think we will have an expansion any earlier from a year and a half away from now.
Current content such as The Black Temple isn't even finished/released yet.
If they plan on staying on track with an expansion in 10 months, I'm thinking the only thing that will be in it is a few new opened instances with some fancy quirk to pvp somehow. It will be nothing like what BC brought such as a new continent, new races, etc. The next expansion is going to be a very big content patch they make you pay for.
IMO they need to straighten up the game they have before releasing new content and making everything unbalanced with classes and itemization. They especially need to work on raid encounters if they want anyone over a 1% of the player base to see end game content.
BartmanDK Mar 17th 2007 1:51AM
Sounds great.. just NO MORE RACES!
Druid dude Mar 17th 2007 1:45PM
My guess: 2 years between expansions. They have already shown that they are very skilled at building up hype over a long period of time. And they have shown that it takes them a couple years to build Burning Crusade. So that's my bet, 2 years.
Adam Mar 17th 2007 3:58AM
I honestly believe they should only do a few things with their next expansion:
1) No new level cap, they shouldn't increase it to 80 or whatever yet. Instead they should create tons of new content/zones for 20-70 (I'm really sick of STV and celebrate each time an alt finishes its last quest in that zone). Basically: Broader not higher.
2) No new races, yet.
3) Flying mounts in Azeroth (I say this as an expansion because it will be so hard to adjust Azeroth to work well with flying mounts)
4) A new class or two.
5) Heroic versions of old dungeons/raids.
michel Mar 17th 2007 5:06AM
new classes ? how ? wow covers already the possibilities in a fantasy mmorpg (dps, heal, tank and hybrids)
or they need to add a _totally_ new way to enjoy the content. very difficult.
Skipomir Mar 18th 2007 11:59AM
I think the game grew stale after about a year or so of playing, and that was with all the pre-BC content.
BC has added new content, and some awesome stuff. I'd guess around December of '07 most veteran players will be bored with World of Warcraft and move on to other games.
I'd guess Blizzard is playing a financial game of equilibrium hoping that the rate of income players will match that of outgoing players.
What I'd wager is that we'll see a new expansion in the Fall of '08, or Winter of '09.
By then, WoW will have lost its luster to newer games in the market, and Blizzard will announce the development of World of Warcraft II, and that there will be no future expansions to WoW.
Personally, I'd love to see Worlds of Starcraft.