Breakfast Topic: The pros and cons of faster expansion release
We complain a lot about the length of the last expansion patch - the point has been made that we've been in SoO for an entire year and more besides by now. But one of the things I've been thinking about lately is this - if they actually managed to ramp up to an expansion a year, that would mean buying a new expansion every year. I don't know if I want to do that. To be honest, I'm really used to the way it has worked so far - from The Burning Crusade on, we've had a new expansion about every two years. TBC released in January of 2007, Wrath in November of 2008, Cataclysm on December 7th, 2010 (it was my birthday), and Mists in September of 2012. That's a very regular series of releases.
If Blizzard starts releasing expansions faster, I think we'll have to curb our expectations of what you see in an expansion to a degree, which might be all for the good - the idea that an expansion has to have a new race or class or both, for instance, would have to go. You can't possibly add one of those to the game every year. Well, I suppose that's not technically true, but the amount of work it would take to have a new one ready to go every year seems daunting.
It would also mean that every BlizzCon would be about World of Warcraft now. As it's highly unlikely that Blizzard is going to have another Hearthstone or Heroes of the Storm ready to go every year, much less expansions to Starcraft II and Diablo III every single year. Whether or not that's good or bad is up to you.
So, let's discuss. Leave out for now the idea of whether or not Blizzard can do a new expansion every year, and discuss instead - should they?
