Isn’t that what each expansion will be?

As far as the time sinks, I think there were many mistakes in level 60 end game content that they have fixed with TBC. I started grinding AD rep at level 50 and leveled several times without hitting exalted. I still am 6k rep away from exalted AD, but I am exalted with several factions in outland all with substantially less time committment.

The big issue I see is people getting friends into the game fresh since I either have to create an alt and level with my friend or let them trudge their way up to 70 and maybe 80 if they don’t hit 70 before the expansion comes. What will it be like in 2 years when they move the cap to 100? Will we see leveling guides promoting 1-100 in 20 days played? Make it in 18 days if you are an expert player running an easy to level class like a hunter/mage/warlock? How could I tell a friend that it would take them 480 hours of serious playing to be able to go on a raid with me?

This increasing time to actually play through all the existing content will be their greatest long term challenge. Speeding up the leveling process just devalues the content already made and nothing can really save the level 60 end-game content since running through it would certainly level you to 65 before you even step foot in outland even if they cut it down from the 40-man requirements. There is too much content at level 60. We will see the same excess content at level 70 when they add the next expansion and so on. You cannot make content both for a group that experiences it after the level cap and also for those who level through it since the design requirements are not the same. In short, if you don’t do Black Temple this time around, you will see it after you run the level 60 Naxxramus and Blackwing Lair. Any of you late comers do that yet? Me either.

Obviously, leveling 70-80 is going to be at least as fun and smooth as it was for 60-70. Obviously, dungeons are going to be fun again (at least until you have to grind heroics), and raids will be new and challenging. It will be fun to explore the new zones in Northrend, and they’re bound to have plenty of variety, and maybe the new pvp zone will turn out to work the way Halaa was meant to. Either way, world pvp in pvp servers will happen again, thanks to the removal of flying mounts for the early levels.

Inscription will probably give at least the same level of character customization that Jewelcrafting did. The new battleground will be insanely popular and tons of fun for a while, but naturally, everyone will play it too much, and get burned out and hate it for a month before playing it as much as the other BGs. Some people will level to 80 inside a month, then do the Deathknight quest, and start lvling a Deathknight around the time some casuals will be hitting 71, not to mention around when some other hardcore levelers get to 80 and decide to level another 70 instead of a deathknight, since it’s likely some people won’t enjoy playing one as much as an alt.

A bunch of people will probably go to WAR, and WoW’s population might actually go down a bit, freaking out Blizzard, and getting them on the ball a bit more with pvp (because pve-ers aren’t going to WAR), unless the new zone and BG turn out well, which could happen.

All in all, I’d say it’s more of the same, with improvements, ie a good thing. Unlike a lot of people, I didn’t burn myself out grinding instances over and over, or raiding endgame again. It is quite possible to decide that you get the most fun in WoW from something entirely different from instances, rep, or raiding.

This is true, but is ‘more of the same’ what the industry is all about, and what we, as the consumers are willing to live with?

What is stopping a company from making new ‘timesinks’ all the time, so that they maintain their addictive treadmilling, but we the consumers, are getting a new experience all the time?

I am sure the obsticles to that could be time, money, innovation, technology… but perhaphs its just the mentality that we buy it ‘as is’ so why bother putting in the effort or taking the risk of designing better?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revealed_preference

Fun features don’t extract nearly as much subscription money as addictive features. And the only reason why people put up with the timesinks is that they provide the right sort of carrot to drive the compulsive timesinking.

Also, most of the timesinks were fun to you once.

“If an MMO company designs a game to truely be fun and inspiring, instead of a 100% timesink, that game would win me as a customer. Someone needs to prove to MMO companies that fun=money, not timesink=money. Unfortunately, we all show them that timesink is more important than fun.”

I believe NCsoft has done that with dungeon runners. Problem with dungeon runners having no timesinks or high level content to grind to the game was a bit boring to me after a month of play. Soon they are adding in some fun pointless PvP content and I might start to play that again, but without timesinks the company has to constantly push out new content to keep the game from getting stale.