Guild Wars 2 has had a rocky history in terms of keeping fans satisfied with their content updates; the "Living world" has gone through multiple iterations before hitting the current one, which we think is here to stay. What they intend to do is release small-scale expansions every 2-3 months, with a new map, new story, all that good stuff, in an effort to bridge the period of content from one expansion to the next. About a year of waiting between expansions, but with interesting things to let you be on top of the story, and in a story based MMO that's excellent for the people playing, who want to be immersed in the world. Then, in the next living story update, rather than slot in a living story update for real, they provide an expansion full of features, before releasing the start of the next living story season 2-4 months later.

The really interesting thing about GW2 is how it built itself up on the idea of new ideas coming out, breaking the mold of older games. While it's success is debatable, certain things have proven their worth - the events system has been adopted by a number of other games (Neverwinter and Final Fantasy 14 jump to mind), Weapon based skills rather than weapons purely designed as stat sticks, the Structured PvP system, the wardrobe and dye system, and I'm sure other things I can't list off the top of my head. The whole game has been an experiment in what works and what doesn't work for a game in ongoing development, which includes basically all MMOs.

I feel that one of the best things CoT could adopt from GW2's design style is the way the living story works now that season three has hit - an update every 2-3 months, which gives enough time for real development while these updates bridge the gap between full feature expansions. Weirdly enough, CoH actually had this idea down pat well before GW2 even started in on it. Check out the dates for release between CoH issues:

[img]http://i.imgur.com/6eXphDd.jpg[/img]

The vast majority of these updates, aside from a few big releases, are at less than 120 days; less than four months from release to release. the best part about these to me was that they kept the game while not feeling fresh, it kept people coming back because the inertia after a serious content update usually keeps you around for 2-3 months. That's powerful from a development standpoint, because it'll keep people interested and keep providing things that keep people interested in the game.

The question, then is whether these updates should bridge the gap between expansions or not. CoH didn't really do the whole "Expansion Pack" thing, instead opting to provide updates for the same price as playing the game normally. On the other hand, a lot of games make their big bucks off of releasing content after a big drought in the form of multi-layer, feature-rich expansions, and it's kept a few titans of the gaming industry going, the most prominent example being world of Warcraft, which despite being over a decade old has an enormous fanbase (and more than a few direct imitators).

So what does the community think? Does the expansion system of gaming titans such as World of Warcraft get you? would you prefer the Issues system of CoH? Or would you prefer a more hybrid system, akin to what Guild Wars 2 has begun doing?