Blizzard's focus shift should mean longer expansions (three years of Legion probably)

[Echo of Soul]

Well it doesn't take a genius to figure out that designing a new continent, new creatures, new quests, new artwork, new sound effects etc etc takes a long time, the majority of the time designing a new expansion. It makes sense to spend as much time as possible in that expansion. Designing a new raid, even a filler raid with no story can be done relatively fast by comparison.
This is a good thing. We never wanted faster expansions, we wanted shorter content droughts between expansions. The two are mutually exclusive in my opinion.

[beanman12345]

I hope not. .0 patches are the biggest patches with the most content. it's fine the way it is, just no year long droughts, but same expansion lengths.

[Sansnom]

So with their focus on faster expansions it still always took them two years to get it done. In the future they will not focus on faster expansions, which will mean that Legion will probably last three years minimum.

Long XP dev was not really the problem. It was the duration between the last raid tier and next XP that made people mad. Personally, I would longer, bigger XP with reasonable content releases in between.

[Keuric]

Each patch/tier is going to be about acquiring one of the Pillars of Creation(hyperbole), it's a hefty excuse to drag an expansion out for 3 years or more.

In WoD, if we failed in Blackrock foundry the only thing that would change is Iron Horde would fight the Legion in Draenor instead of us. Our actions had no significant consequences, if we fail on Azeroth the Legion wins and takes over the planet, It justifies having a longer expansion life.

You need to accept the possibility that this could be the last expansion ever made for WoW, meaning it could last until they turn the servers off.

No one needs to accept this possibility. Because it's silly. It's too profitable, it acts as a platform for too many other properties. It isn't going to happen. This might be the expansion we finally start dealing with Sargeras and move on to more cosmic/other worldly things, but this isn't the last expansion.

[Nekosom]

When they release another expansion, it would be wise of them to simply expand on the fight against the Burning Legion rather than move on to another topic. Because whatever they come up with will pale in comparison. Sargeras isn't going to be the end boss of this expansion, so however this expansion ends, there's going to be unresolved issues. Whether that's us invading Argus, fighting an invasion somewhere else, or perhaps even losing and having to push back against a Legion-dominated Azeroth. The fight needs to continue. There's just so much to this topic. N'Zoth, Queen Azshara...after Legion, can anything else possibly stack up?