As World of Warcraft players will know, the game’s expansions don’t appear as often as most fans would like. New content is often burned through quickly by players.
Speaking at BlizzCon today WoW Game director Tom Chilton commented that the development team are aiming to release expansions on an annual basis and that there were already two more expansions planned.
“We know what the next expansion after this expansion is going to be, in pretty clear terms. We have ideas on what the next one after that will be, we gave pretty good sense of where the storyline is going to lead.”
When quizzed about the level cap reaching 100 and where the game was going he added:
“I can imagine an expansion that doesn’t have a level cap increase, but I wouldn’t actually assume that. I would assume there is a chance that the level will go to 105 or 110 or whatever it is.”
The Warlords of Draenor expansion, which has just been announced, will bring enhancements to the game including improved character models and Tom says that they are trying to incrementally advance the technology through each new expansion, whether it be the game world, effects or the characters.
“We feel that’s been the way to go so there isn’t a before and after shock, it’s more gradual”, said Chilton.
It’s usually taken around 18 months for Blizzard to release an expansion so if they can speed up the development process players are more likely to stick with it. The WoW team has increased from 65 developers when the original WoW launched to 190 and there is a desire to get the new expansions completed on an annual basis.
“That’s the goal. I don’t know when we’ll get there exactly but that’s the direction we’re heading. We are creating a structure where we can do parallel development where we can have people working on Warlords of Draenor and have people working on the next expansion after that”.
Good news for World of Warcraft players, it sounds like Blizzard will be keeping the game vibrant for years to come.
