The lights are on
With World of Warcraft's third expansion pack, Cataclysm, not far off from its December release, it has unsurprisingly been the focus of BlizzCon 2010's World of Warcraft coverage. However, Blizzard hasn't been shy about one fact: They're already beginning to look toward the fourth expansion pack, and they want it to be even bigger than Cataclysm.
I spoke to World of Warcraft senior producer John Lagrave earlier today and asked him how Blizzard hopes to top Cataclysm, an expansion pack where they are rebuilding the whole original world from World of Warcraft's launch. His response: "The thing we're trying to do in the next expansion is pretty f'ing awesome."
Lagrave told me about the Blizzard process for coming up with ideas for new expansions and new content, which involves early morning meetings where anyone can throw out crazy ideas. These meetings have already produced an idea for the inevitable fourth World of Warcraft expansion.
Lagrave explained: "We've now got a central idea [for the next expansion] that makes me happy and gets me excited, and it makes everyone else happy and excited. When everybody gets happy and excited, we know we're on to something. We don't know if it's going to be the final thing, but we know something good is coming. Will it top Cataclysm? I think it's pretty freakin' awesome. I'm really hopeful."
When I made a joke about how it wasn't huge or shocking news that they're going to do another expansion, Lagrave laughed as well. How many expansions will World of Warcraft have? He said, "I think we'll do expansions basically until [Blizzard president] Mike Morhaime says there's no need to do any more."
World of Warcraft fans have plenty to be excited about with Cataclysm coming out soon, but it's good to know that Blizzard is already thinking about how to avoid letting us down with whatever comes next.
by the time this releases people will be doing 20k dps
They always say it's going to be awesome....I have yet to be convinced that getting involved in WoW is a good idea.
Maybe they'll fulfill my wish of a Dark Portals X-Pack, We would get loads of portals (of which there are plenty hiding around in the game world) and they would lead to at least 3 different worlds.
Oh yea... That probably won't happen :\
Their excitement has me excited. But I'm afraid I'm going to have to upgrade my computer soon. I mean, the updates just to prep for Cataclysm has my computer already bogging down more. How bothersome.
It's gotta be defeating the Burning Legion. Kil'Jaeden isn't going to just kill himself. Or maybe its Sargeras...
Fart noise...
Wow cata isin't even out yet and their thinking about the next one.
They will soon need to do something... i mean i need to buy every wow game/expansions if i wanna play the game and thats too much for me when i also need to pay monthly... in the end it will be so expensive nobobody new will join wow and play it..and the game will slowly loose people and die... and if they stop with expansions people will one day have done everything and will slowly stop playing... having such big expansions will hurt blizzard in the end.
They should totally have a World of Starcraft and World of Diablo you can just link to, and make time bending portals that link between them. That's one way to top Cataclysm.
i think i might start playing again
I already re-upped, scraped together the connections to get a "Late to the Party" Collector's Edition of Cataclysm, and now you're dropping the NEXT one on me before the third even launches.
EVIL.
Oh god thinking ahead already?
Wow I can't wait.
I'm just not that excited for WOW anymore, I canceled my subscription until this expansion comes out. Hopefully Cat will get me into it again.
dont even play this game
I can't wait for the new expansion. I love everything Blizzard makes!
well if it's Fing Awesome then I'll like it.
Well, its official, this game is going to be going strong until the end of this decade. This game will become the Simpson's of MMO's. It'll keep going, and going, and going, and going.....
In Blizzard's mind, every expansion has been "pretty f'ing awesome". Admittedly, they usually start out strong but dwindle into a pile of crap by the time the first content patch comes out.
Honestly, looking back on it, the Ulduar content patch was the beginning of the end for the current iteration and I watched people migrate away for long term "breaks" when we got the stupid Argent Tournament world event. Some came back for ICC, some didn't.
There's been a readily viewable pattern for the expansions, thus far. Strong beginning. Decent staying power through the first major content patch. Growing discontent amongst both "casual" and "hardcore" players by the second content patch. Large groups of people taking breaks until the final major dungeon then disappearing again until the next expansion.
Population numbers have been in such flux on both the servers I have played on since launch that it ultimately made me decide to finally hang up my WoW hat after all these years. We were losing regulars on a weekly, sometimes daily, basis since the opening of the full Argent Tournament raid. We spent more time trying to fill a group for a simple ICC 10 or 25 than we did actually playing.