The real question is though is that a symptom of the end of progression or a symptom of the rest of the game just not being compelling enough to hold interest at max level without that progression? At the end of an expansion cycle there's very little in wow left to do for a fully progressed character and most of those have probably been farmed to death over the previous year. By the time the last patch of the cycle roles around there are many who only log on just for the raids because they are bored silly of everything else thats even remotely challenging. With downscaleing more of the content stays relevant so it should in theory take much longer to run all the available content till the thought of running it again makes you want to puke. we also dont know what the GW2 expansion cycle will be. If they match pace with GW1's till they stoped expanding were looking at expansions at least twice as fast as wow. only time well tell how it works out.
---------- Post added 2012-05-24 at 11:19 PM ----------
there was a team on my server that actualy did that. Not the cat name because it was taken but the druid pulled that stunt with the guild tag.