Again on the discussion about the mudflation started here and continued here and specifically on the expansion packs EQ2 is going to release. Maybe soon I’ll also have time to delve on the alternative (better) solution.

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Slyfrog:
So long as they don’t. I think HRose’s point, which I believe is legitimate here, is that the expansion packs become damaging if they are not truly optional.

They cannot possibly become optional. That’s the point. It’s a *loss* of content.

These are multiplayer game, the community must and will agree on what is the “default” path. It can be the new expansion (because it’s overpowered), it can be the old world (because it’s accessible for everyone). Once the battle between these two points is over and the path is chosed and set, it’s HARD to decide to go experiment with the content noone touches. Or you have a guild following your orders and allowing you to invent what you want, or you’ll have to go group and play along with others and along the consolidate path.

Spending six hours LFG because you want to do a quest noone does (because they do not have paid for it or because it has been mudflated out of the game and replaced by a more powerful version) is not fun and won’t happen.

At best these packs, if not completely overpowered, will be use-to-trash content that is considered till it’s new and then forgotten forever.

In an always-enlarging game where the number of zones doubles in less than a year but where the players on a server tend to remain still (or decrease), you move toward a desert with “one player per zone”. This is why the players will automatically start to gather and build paths. So that there will be 10 players in one zone and zero in the other 9 zones that are “lost content”.

The problem goes deeper. This type of dev-work is basically wasted on adding content that has a value only at the precise moment it gets released. Then it goes mudflated and it becomes unused and forgotten. The work of those devs goes directly wasted in the long term.

Now, it isn’t POSSIBLE to have a BETTER model that doesn’t WASTE that precious man work? Yes, but the maket doesn’t seem to go that way. An useful type of development for a mmorpg goes deeper than adding zones and monsters following the exact same model. It’s easy to add this stuff and put a fee on it. It’s basically impossible to really continue to DEVELOP the game on what matters because what matters involves everyone. You cannot add layers of complexity and then restrict the access to them with an expansion.

So, the key of this discussion is that you cannot build and really continue to develop a mmorpg by putting barriers between your players with the release of expansions. Because, since they MUST be optional (as optional expansions), they CANNOT affect the game world in a radical, pervasive way.

This is why I’m all for rising the monthly fee up to 25$ per month but justified by a REAL ongoing development on all fronts. SOE probably surveyed the market and noticed that it isn’t possible to rise the monthly fee, while it is viable to release cheap content patch for 5$.

Now the problem is that while this works from the economic point of view, it damages the design of the game. Basically hindering its potential.

P.S.
The same will happen for Guild Wars. Or they add overpowering content that you must pay for or you are “optionally” out.