This article was published on Blair Space at:
http://games.blairspace.com/features/45.html
Expansion packs and MMORPGs
The latest rumor I heard was that Blizzard may be planning to introduce an expansion pack for World of Warcraft. That said, there have been no signs of it at E3 although they were busy with their new battlegrounds feature which will be included in the next patch.
Star Wars Galaxies already has at least one expansion pack. I'm not 100% about other MMORPGs but I know that a few of them including Anarchy Online have expansion packs. But the thing is, expansion packs are a really, really bad idea.
If there was any doubt that the games companies are now simply money grabbing hoers than expansion packs for MMORPGs have to wipe any such thoughts away. Not only are we paying monthly but now we have to pay for a new expansion pack year. Patch the games dammit!
The thing is, you can't force people to buy expansion packs, people don't want to. The hardcore gamers will yes and there is probably a lot of them, but on the same footing, a lot of people won't.
Therefore you end up with a situation where some players have the packs and some players don't. This just makes things messy. For instance what happens if a group of friends want to do one thing that requires the expansion pack but the other group doesn't have the expansion pack?
Expansion packs suck and game producers are just spitting in the face of the people who play their games when they raid their wallet once again just so that players can continue playing the game they are already paying monthly for. My advice: don't buy the expansion packs, tell the companies to patch it!
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