Let’s say I buy Awesome Game 1.0 on launch day. A few months later Awesome Game 2.0 Expansion Pack comes out, but I’m broke and don’t buy it. A few more months later, Awesome Game 3.0 Expansion Pack comes out, and this time I have money. Will buying the 3.0 pack mean that I also get the goodies included in the 2.0 pack, or will I have to buy both packs?
It depends on the publisher and how hard they want to push their product, but usually the packs stay separate unless they offer some sort of bundled package special sale.
Here’s what usually happens:
R (Release day) - Awesome game 1.0 - $50
R+3 (3 months later) - Awesome expansion pack 1 - $30, original game drops to $30
R+9 - Awesome expansion pack 2 - $30, original game gets bundled with exp 1 - $30
R+12 - Awesome game w/ both expansions bundled - $30
R+15 - Steam offers the entire bundle for $10 and you get hooked to Steam sales like a drug addict, often waking in a haze to find unfamiliar games in your Steam library, unable to recall when or why you purchased them
The most common situation is that Awesome Game 3.0 Expansion requires Awesome Game 2.0 Expansion Pack, but that’s mostly because few non-MMO games make it to a second expansion. If they don’t depend on each other, they’re usually branded as DLC or content packs. This latter form is becoming far more common. In either case, the third doesn’t include the content of the second. Exceptions exist for everything though, since it really just depends on how the game is designed or what the publisher/developer wants to do.
So in a real-life situation, am I going to have to buy Lich King and then Burning Crusade (or vice-versa; I’m not sure which one came out first) before buying Cataclysm?
MMOs are usually one of the exceptions to what Palooka described. Most likely, buying Cataclysm will grant you access to both TBC and WotLK. I’m having trouble remembering any examples of MMOs where this wasn’t the case.
Back in the day, Everquest expansions only gave the base game and the expansion on the box but not the previous ones. So the second expansion, Scars of Velious, gave you SoV and the core game but not the Ruins of Kunark expansion that came in between.
I don’t think it was until their fifth or sixth expansion that they started making each “expansion” all inclusive or anything that came before.
Cataclysm will require Wrath of the Lich King (which itself requires The Burning Crusade).
Hmm, that’s what happens when you get old and your memory becomes a sieve. After a bit of looking around, it appears there’s a WoW Battlechest out that includes both the original game and TBC for the price of the original game – and Wrath is separate. It seems likely once Cataclysm comes out, there will be a Battlechest that includes both Wrath and Crusade.
I was definitely thinking of Everquest and DaoC with the all-inclusive expansions (and that only happens once every few expansions now that I’m thinking about it).
How would that work for an MMO? Doesn’t everyone on the same server/realm/whatever need to have the same set of expansions? Did they have separate realms for original only, RoK only, SoV only, and both? That’d add up pretty quickly if you had any more expansions.
Usually, an expansion would include a new continent/area for players to explore. You could be on the same server as someone with different expansions, and interact with them in common areas, but be unable to access expansion-specific content (new dungeons, new level caps, new lands/zones/etc, would be unavailable to you – smaller improvements to the original gameplay/interface would usually be accessible to all though).
I can’t recall any where that was the case. City of Heroes did eventually roll City of Villains into the main game (I understand, since I already owned it I can’t tell), but that did not coincide with the release of an expansion.
What you may have been thinking of is the relatively common practice of bundling the game with its expansions in later releases, as you noted with the WoW Battle Chest.
In another example, Borderlands has 3 (soon to be 4) expansion packs. All can be purchased independently. They are releasing a “Game of the Year” version in October that will combine the expansions with the main game for a single lower price. Dragon Age and Fallout 3 have done the same sort of thing.
On the same note, Ultima Online included previous expansions content and lands with their newest expansions. But then alot of what UO offered was ignored in favor of the Everquest mold.
No, buying Cataclysm will NOT give you automatic access to the rest of the game. You have to buy vanilla+TBC+WotLK+Cat… but Bliz will no doubt be offering a bundled deal.
I’m wondering that for Cataclysm, since they are redoing the entire world of the original WoW. Not just adding new places, but modifying the old ones. Is there going to be two parallel versions of Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms?
No, just one version of Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms, and that will be the new version. Blizzard has actually been pretty clear on this, but the fan base not so much.
The Civ IV expansion Beyond the Sword contains all the additional units, techs, leaders, and so on of Warlords except for the scenarios. So there’s one exception.
Neverwinter Nights was playable base, or with Shadows of Undrentide and/or Hordes of the Underdark installed as well. If the later games were installed, the additional classes, spells, etc. were available while playing NWN, although I don’t think a 1st-level character starting NWN could gain enough experience to reach the higher levels and classes available from HotU. I don’t believe the later premium download modules added anything in to the base game, but I could be wrong about that.