14 DAY TRIAL // It's hard to keep hardcore MMO players happy. They tend to power game and this means that they quickly go through content and often explore areas quicker than developers can put them out. So creating enough stuff to keep them occupied is a major challenge for all developers trying to come up with a successful MMO.
Tom Chilton, who is the lead designer for Wrath of the Lich King, talked to VG247 at the Games Convention earlier in the year and he confirmed that more continents are in the development pipeline. He stated that "We actually already have ideas on how we’re going to expand on that in the future. Certainly, the major landmasses that we talked about heavily in previous WarCraft game have already come to fruition, although there are still areas of the game that we’ve talked about and set up story-wise that we haven’t revealed yet. So there’s definitely more to go."
Wrath of the Link King, the second expansion to the original game after Burning Crusade, is set to let players wander and fight their way through the continent of Northrend, a place where ice rules and where players can fight Arthas. The expansion is also meant to add a new class to the game, the Death Knight, and to improve the overall experience for long-time players.
At the moment World of Warcraft is the most popular MMO in the world, with more than 10 million gamers subscribing to it every month. But the success of the title also means that Blizzard has to work overtime to add new things to it to keep it interesting and fresh, and some of the developers have even talked about "success fatigue."
Wrath of the Lich King will be out this year, although no definite date has been announced by Blizzard.