In the gaming world, we know that people love franchises. They like to see the same characters, settings, and stories expanded upon. Therefore most developers make expansions to their popular games so that players have to buy more content. Now is a huge time for MMO expansions.
- EverQuest released Call of the Forsaken on October 8.
- EverQuest II have been playing Tears of Veeshan since Nov 12.
- Eve Online just got the Rubicon on November 19.
- Lord of the Rings Online is currently celebrating the Helm’s Deep launch day.
- Lineage II is adding Valiance some tie this year.
- Star Wars: The Old Republic is getting Galactic Starfighter on January 14, 2014.
Some notable exceptions to that list include Guild Wars 2 and Star Trek Online, The developers of those games have decided to patch their games with updates such as the Living World and the Dyson Sphere respectively. Some fans love that they get content every couple of weeks, but others consider the free updates a low-quality expansion with much less meat. Guild Wars 2, in particular, releases content every two weeks for free so it’s building up to an almost-expansion.
You can’t talk MMOs and expansions without talking World of Warcraft (WoW). Currently, that Warlords of Draenor is an expansion pack that has been announced but doesn’t have a release date. WoW is staying the course with their subscription model and asking players to buy expansions separately. This model might be unnecessarily expensive, but WoW is still popular, so maybe not.
Hopefully some of these expansions interest you, because they represent a large amount of content for some big AAA games. You should try and see if at least one of these could suck you in and squeeze your time. If not, an expansion then an MMO that’s coming out soon like Elder Scrolls Online or WildStar might call your name. MMOs are addicting, but definitely worth a try.
