Is there anything more exciting than new MMO content? Maybe, but for this blog post, no. Most often this new content comes to us via expansions. Sometimes they are free, sometimes they need to be paid for. Each MMO has its own idea of how this should be done. For this post, content additions and expansions are roughly equal.
On the free side you have games like
Eve,
Star Wars Galaxies and
City of Heroes/Villains. They tend to release new content, at decent intervals, for just the cost of the subscription. SWG recently released the
Battle for Hoth and an
Appearance Tab system. CoX put out
Issue 13, which had many improvements.
If you added up all of the free content those games release for a year, would it add up to a paid expansion? I think in many cases it would, but then you would have to add in the fact that you had to wait. Free expansions allow for more additions, quicker which means a more dynamic game.
On the pay side, you have games like
WoW and
Everquest. These games do put out free content upgrades too, but usually they are few and far between (I am looking at you WoW). When they do put out a paid expansion, it is usually packed full of content and worth the wait. The downside is that paid expansions can be slow to hit the marketplace.
Finally there is the hybrid, like
Lord of the Rings Online. They put out free content updates (
Book 13 ) pretty regularly and a rather large paid expansion (
Mines of Moria).
As far as
WAR goes, we will have to wait and see what approach they take. I think it will be a hybrid, but I can't recall where I heard that. They have released 2 new careers so far and have plans to release another two soon. These were cut from launch, but are free content none the less. I can't wait to hear their ideas for a paid expansion.
What kind of expansion do you prefer?I would have to go for LoRTO. It seems that they are giving their customers the best of both worlds in terms of content. I really do like the free updates, however, I suspect a paid expansion can be very healthy for a game. Maybe it is just psychological, but the expectations are higher when shelling out extra money, regardless of the amount of free content they have been releasing.
