Realistically, do you think we will ever see an expansion?

I'm with you.

You mean like Bioware EA?

The normal loss after launch is between 25-35%. We went from 1.7 million to less than one million. I hate lowballing figures but I'm going with 500k (since EA won't tell us I can be as conservative as I like in my estimates).

.5/1.7 = 30% of original subscribers. So we lost 70% of all players. That's double the normal loss you see with most mmos after launch. That being said, when WoW first launch they lost quite a few players as they worked out the bugs - WoW was actually buggier at launch than SWTOR - but within 2 years they had more subs than when they started. Not hating, but I don't see that happening here.

FTP will come in November-December. Figure 4-6 months for those players to get up to level cap and get hooked, create some revenue from FTP cartel purchases. Couple of "major" updates that add some content and keep founders interested enough to stick around. Founders and FTP folks start to get bored at cap, so first major expansion hits the shelves in May. Pimp it, sell it, game has major bugs worked out at that point since it will have been live for almost a year and a half. EA can report flourishing fan base and revenue stream thanks to the influx of FTP players....Then thanks to May release of expansion EA gets to walk into E3 in June and tout all of the accomplishments and how great things are going. If I'm running EA, that is the timeline and series of events that I am betting my investment on.

Suck it up Buttercup its going to happen. Thats the way most level based MMOS go.

Normally I agree with you. But not this time.

People want the game expanded and the norm is paid expansions. Would it be better to do it over time for no cost yes. Is that a realistic expectation? Not at all.

Expansions generally remake the game. The amount of content is usually so large that the cost is justified.

But with the size of the dev team as it is now, do you really think an expansion is a realistic expectation? I don't.

And expansions are only the norm for one game, btw. Most MMOs only do regular updates.

Just a question here. Do you know how big the dev team was before the lay offs, and then again after them? There could well be enough people to make an expansion.

In reply to OP's original question, the answer is: NO.

Now is there going to be something they "call" an expansion... definitely YES(but will that make it an expansion? err... NO.).

Specifics, no. But just guesstimating from what they've told us, do you think the dev team is as big as that other game for which expansions are the norm?