Cata at what cost?

[kate]

No need to predict, it has been this way with the last 2 expansions and Blizzard already said it's the same for Cataclysm.

Not sure how you're expecting to fill the 60-70 gap of Outland or 70-80 gap of Northrend, both which require their own expansions, unless you're planning on grinding boars in Elwynn Forest. The expansions will need to be bought and applied to any new users account.

You're misunderstanding, or I wasn't super clear. The 1-60 stuff will not be the "old" Azeroth - it'll be the Cataclysm Azeroth. However, unless they pay for the expansion, they won't be able to play goblins or worgen, and won't be able to access draeni, blood elves, and deathknights. I can see Blizzard allowing people to go to outland and northrend without buying the expansions - they just won't be able to be the races or classes that were introduced unless they pay for those.

A fan base that they'd quickly lose. I can't imagine how many people would quit this game if they had to pay money to access classes or zones. I would guess that more people would quit the game than would be paying to access this content, in turn, Blizzard would be losing money for taking such a route.

I wouldn't be so sure. They sold millions of panda vanity pets and those dumb celestial winged horse mounts. I absolutely see them saying "hey, we want to introduce entire new races or classes or zones, but we don't want to put it in an expansion because it's not that big, so you can buy them ala carte instead for less money, and we can get them out to you more frequently so the game stays fresh." The only time I could see microtransactions causing a massive fanbase revolt like you suggest would be if they offered actual *advantages* ingame. In this case, it would simply be offering distributed expansions over time rather than just these big, huge, every-2-years deals.

Also, they've said before they don't want to flood Azeroth with new races and classes every expansion, It's hard enough to balance what they've got. There is lore and history to this game that they've been [semi] sticking to. And how would Blizzard just whip up another class that would fit nicely every year? Do you think that all the ideas and programming for an expansion are done in 6 months and the other 18 months their programmers and writers are just on vacation? Probably before Wrath was released they were already working on Cataclysm, and the way it's looking... they might not even hit the released date they had planned in their heads.

They've changed lore when it's convenient, going the full-on retcon route to just minor tweaks (it wasn't Zalzin or whatever his name is, but a cleverly disguised set of coconuts! It wasn't mechengineer whoozit, but a construct!)

Balancing new races is easy, but the class part is, I agree, tricky. And I think, actually, that they have a lot of stuff that is going on simultaneously, not "whipped up" over the course of 6 months. They've said repeatedly that they began work on cataclysm before WotLK came out. However, given that it presumably takes fewer resources to make a new race than it does to make an entire new expansion, yes, I actually do think it would be easier for them to release those regularly separate from an expansion. If they released individual zones, again, being able to focus on just that is probably a lot easier than trying to manage the development of an expansion, and takes fewer resources and less time.

Frequent, smaller releases of paid content that is easier to develop is where I see the game going - I may be wrong, but I think it absolutely makes sense given what they've been doing so far (testing out the microtransactions going from a useless vanity pet to something bigger that has an actual in-game effect, albeit a small one) and given how the marketplace is changing.

Heck, just take a look at how many people cancel subscriptions between content patches, or cancel for a few months before the launch of an expansion, to resubscribe when new things come out? If they did a schedule of having *something* new coming out every 3 months (content patches, new race, new class, new zone - any one of those) they would keep people paying and interested rather than have people say "I'm taking a break until (whatever) comes out..." How many people say "such and such a game just launched, I'm going to try that until (whatever) WoW thing comes out..."? If there's *always* something near release that's more incentive for those people to stay with WoW.

I don't see the massive revolt because I don't really see that paying, say, $10-25 every 3-6-9 months or so (if they do a free content patch followed by a paid one, followed by a free, etc.) and always getting something new to try in game is bad compared to only paying $50 every 2 years, but having to wait longer for new things. Personally I'd rather pay slightly more for a more dynamic game then less but have to wait.

Anyway, I may be wrong, I may be right, it's not particularly important to me either way. I'll just say that if there is any company that can make such massive changes to the MMO marketplace, it's Blizzard, and they have a pretty good incentive to do it - more money, a richer game offering than any competitor, and an even larger playerbase certainly wouldn't be disincentives to them!