Breakfast Topic: A world without expansions

What if WoW just stopped having expansions? At least, expansions as we know them. I’ll explain: Recently, we were told World of Warcraft will be pursing a slower expansion cycle with more patches (theoretically, more content) between expansions. This got me thinking about whether or not we actually need more expansions. Obviously from the standard of selling more copies of software, sure, expansions serve a purpose. But we could do without them, I believe — and in so doing solve a lot of headaches.

For starters, we wouldn’t always have to watch as older content becomes essentially utterly irrelevant. With the scaling technology we’re seeing in Legion, an extended period of no expansions could allow us to level up through ever more patches — imagine if several new zones were added that would allow you to go there as a max level character, or as a level 100 just starting out in Legion.

Or you could have entire content patches aimed at max level that had nothing to do with the Legion at all. Why not? When we got done with AQ, we went to Naxx and fought the Scourge, we didn’t keep fighting Qiraji. Why not give us a break from the demons after we’ve balked the Legion (assuming we do) and let us go to Zandalar Isle or explore some place entirely new? Maybe we can go to Undermine, or even back to Draenor and deal with the fallout of our time there, or make a stop in Pandaria to deal with some Mantid.

Maybe we’d ultimately have to have an expansion sooner or later. But for me, I think it could be a lot later, as long as new stuff to do kept happening in between. Maybe we could just stay level 110 for a long, long time.

How do you feel about this? Are expansions a necessary part of the process, or are you simply looking for more content in whatever form it takes?