Is Cataclysm the Next World of Warcraft Expansion?

ajs writes "There has been no official announcement yet, but a number of moves by Blizzard Entertainment seem to indicate that the next expansion for World of Warcraft could be titled Cataclysm. Speculation began when Blizzard trademarked Cataclysm recently, and then later when a test server briefly popped up with the word 'Maelstrom' in its name. If true, the name would fall neatly into the WoW lore and expected expansion list. The Cataclysm is another name for the Great Sundering, an event that created a swirling vortex of water and mystical energies (the 'Maelstrom') that has appeared on the world map in-game since release. There are also indications that early design work included some of the islands in this area, which has long fueled anticipation of a Maelstrom-based expansion involving the former Night Elf noble, Azshara, queen of the Naga and the Goblins whose main city is in the south seas."

Comments

South Seas Lore

[MEDIEVALDRAGON]

Here is some lore of each isle in the South Seas:
http://wow.incgamers.com/blog/comments/south-seas-lore-the-eye-maelstrom/

He has no idea what he's talking about

[Sycraft-fu]

Maybe it is a lame joke, maybe he's a WoW hater who wishes it was the last, whatever the case it has no basis in reality. Currently, there are over 11 million subscribers to WoW where a subscriber is defined as someone who has paid to play in the last month. That number continues to increase, and accounts for about 60% of all MMO players. Eventually, it's popularity will peak and numbers will start to wane, but not at this point. Right now, it is still extremely popular.

Well, as you can probably guess, Blizzard and more specifically Vivendi (their parent company) aren't stupid and wish to make as much money as possible. That means they'll keep releasing expansions and content for WoW because they want to keep all those subscribers. They aren't going to say "Let's just let the game atrophy and have everyone run off to play something else." They want those dollars, they will keep developing it.

What's more, an MMO doesn't even have to be growing to be worth developing content for. It just has to have enough players such that the money pays the bills to run the game, pay the developers of the new content, and make a profit. Thus you find even old games are still under active development. Everquest released their 15th expansion last October, and they've got a 16th planned for this November. It has been running for a decade, and the sequel has already been out for a couple years. However people still want to play, so Sony is still making content for it.

So no, this isn't the last WoW expansion. They are going to keep working on that game to keep getting subscribers for as long as it is profitable. To do anything else would be to incur the wrath of their shareholders.

Test Server named Maelstrom

[VGPowerlord]

peculation began when Blizzard trademarked Cataclysm recently, and then later when a test server briefly popped up with the word 'Maelstrom' in its name.

A test server named Maelstrom? Now I know they're pulling shit out of their ass, as Maelstrom is an existing RPPvP server that launched in September of 2006.