Blizzard have announced their intentions to release World of Warcraft expansions and new content more frequently as they have noticed that players these days go through new content at a much quicker pace than what was previously the case.
Speaking to investors and analysts Blizzard boss Mike Morhaime said:
"As our players become more experienced playing World of Warcraft over the many years, they have become much better and much faster at consuming content. And so I think with Cataclysm they were able to consume the content much faster than with previous expansions, but that's why we're working on developing more content."
According to leaked information Blizzard are planning to have the next World of Warcraft expansion out in the second quarter of 2012, with the next one after that hitting towards the end of 2013. When asked whether more frequent releases meant less content with each expansion Morhaime said:
"We're not ready to talk about the content of the expansions at this stage but we are looking at ways to speed up the development process."
With World of Warcraft losing 600,000 players since the release of World of Warcraft: Cataclysm it is clear that the company is looking for ways to keep subscribers hooked in between major updates.