You have probably already seen Trion Worlds’ announcement about their expansion to Rift. Titled Storm Legion, it appears to be a pretty standard expansion, while the video that goes with it makes it clear that we are in for some precipitation with this expansion.
Someone left the Rift out in the rain…
Storm Legion has:
- Two new continents
- 10 more levels
- More crafting levels
- A New home town shared by Guardians and Defiants called Tempest Bay
- More dungeons and more raids
- Another soul to worry about for each of the base classes
- A new equipment slots – Capes are the true mark of the nerd
- Some sort of home/guild hall type of personal space in game
- Generally more of the same, only bigger, stronger, faster, etc.
All pretty standard stuff for an MMO expansion. I mean, if you took out the “personal space” thing (and boy, are people projecting their dreams onto that line item… watch out Trion, you toy with emotions on that front at your peril) and blurred the details a bit then it starts to sound a lot like Burning Crusade. Or Wrath of the Lich King. Or Ruins of Kunark. Or Rise of Kunark!
Is Tempest Bay the new Shattrath?
And I do not mean to sound dismissive, but it is hard for me to build up any big wave of enthusiasm for this expansion, very much the way I have been unable to build up such for the game itself.
Rift is a very good MMO, but Trion’s approach has been to combine all that is good in the post-WoW world into one shiny, well-oiled machine of a package so that some of us can try and fill that empty space within us that the long timeline between WoW expansions… or WoW expansions that do not thrill us… leaves.
And Trion does that so well that my only worry is that they will go evil and turn their work into a mocking parody… and that I won’t notice.
So while I enjoy the game and appreciate all the work that has made it so smooth, it has never created the level of passion in me that EverQuest or World of Warcraft have in the past.
And thus my response to this expansion was not “Hurray! More Rift to play!” but a much more calm “I am glad to see that they are doing so well.” How very nice for you!
Because, in my mind, releasing expansions to your MMO means success. It is part of the cycle that I have come to expect having been trained early by EverQuest.
And MMOs that do not release expansions… well… they tend to be viewed as failures to one degree or another. Think of that list. Here is what springs to mind for me.
- Vanguard
- Warhammer Online
- The Matrix Online
- Chronicles of Spellborn
The stink of failure, games languishing or closed, which saw no expansions.
And, of course, success brings more success with expansions. There are box sales (real or virtual along with the now standard junk collector’s edition) that bring in funds along with a boost in the subscription rate as those who have wandered off return to see what, if anything, is new and exciting in the world.
Even games like EVE Online which offer up free expansions (which I suspect are free in part because I wouldn’t pay for a lot of the stuff they offer and because so much of these expansions are really fixing or upgrading things that you couldn’t limit to a subset of players) tend to see jumps in subscription rates as they offer up new goodies.
So expansions spell success, while a lack of expansions appears to mean stagnation and closure.
Or so says my surface level bias. But is it necessarily so?
Are there surviving and thriving MMORPGs out there that have never offered anything like an expansion? (And how does one define an expansion? At what point does something count as an expansion?)
Or, on the flip side, has there been an MMORPG that expansioned itself to death? (No, Cataclysm doesn’t count SynCaine, but you can make the case for Trammel I suppose.)
How important are expansion to the genre? Are expansion becoming old school thinking in the industry move to free to play, or are they still a viable measure of success?
The Ancient Gaming Noob 
To some extent, EQ expansioned itself to death. It’s hard to find someone who played EQ in the pre-WOW era that didn’t leave the game after X expansion.
DF may be expansioning itself to death right now, but in a different way. The expansion originally entitled DF 2010 (then DF Arena, now DF 2.0) hasn’t dropped yet. All the people who were (are?) waiting for the expansion are quite far removed from the game. Time will tell if this doesn’t spell the end for AV.
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Shadowbane had 2(?) expansions and shut down.
WoW died after Pandatown (sorry Syn from the future talking).
Has ATitD ever had an expansion?
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Shadowbane! Yeah, they had two expansions. That is interesting because after two early expansions things really went down hill (as opposed to just going downhill at a standard rate I guess). Then they went free to play… and after a couple years of that it was shut down.
So a lack of expansions during the final four years of game might be seen as supporting the pattern. Hrmm….
I am not sure A Tale in the Desert fits in the standard MMORPG pattern for a number of reasons.
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I share your feelings about the Rift expansion almost exactly. Rift is a very good MMO indeed but despite playing and enjoying it for six months, it’s the seven-year old EQ2 that’s occupying most of my time until TSW and GW2.
You may remember I commented a couple of time over at Inventory Full that I thought someone at Trion was taking the piss as we say on this side of the pond. I’ve had the distinct impression that there is a certain amount of laughter at our expense going on over there for a while now.
As for expansions, I love them. If I like an MMO I positively welcome the chance to buy more of it. Vanguard has survived wonderfully without one but it will need one some time after it goes F2P I would think. As for MMOs that have done well without one… I was going to say Ryzom, but they did have one once. Fallen Earth? Neither of those have done “well” but they are both still plugging on and they’re both really good MMOs.
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Expansions are good for an MMO for the simple fact that it gets them covered in the media all over again. So apart from bringing in players who have defected for any old reason it also gets new players into the fold by creating a buzz.
I would say an DDO was a reasonably successful MMO which released an expansion extremely late after release. Speaking of which: expansions still have their place in the f2p space.
Excellent post by the way. Very thought provoking.
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I’m firmly of the opinion that MMOs are either growing or dying. Case in point: I just resubscribed to Rift last night. The expansion got me that interested in the game again.
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