Do Rolling Expansion Launches Work?

A curious thing happened with the launch of EVE Online's latest expansion, Revenant. The developers keep rolling out content. First, we had the initial expansion launch on 12 November. Writing up the patch notes, the expansion seemed a lot smaller than the Equinox expansion in June. But then, two weeks later, the developers rolled out what I called the Thanksgiving patch on 26 November. When I read the patch notes, I thought to myself, "This is a mini-expansion." I published another 5 posts covering that patch.

This week players saw another sizable patch for Revenant. The accompanying dev blog detailed a new corporation project type, a new use for Evermarks, and starting tomorrow in-game cinematic introductions for ships. And I'm not even including today's patch. (Spoiler, check the wrecks in space.) Unlike other patches, I didn't even dedicate a post on the latest updates to the Tranquility shard.

I can see why CCP would choose a rolling launch for Revenant. They had two dates reserved for content drops at the end of November and start of December anyway. Last week saw a patch associated with the development and testing of EVE Vanguard, CCP's first person shooter under development. And tomorrow is the launch of EVE's second big seasonal event, Winter Nexus. If the developers have additional content to deploy, why not just add it to the patch?

Well, players of Final Fantasy XIV might go apoplectic. Maintenance downtime periods for content patches for the Square Enix title usually run from 6 hours for point patches to a full day for expansions. But CCP has really worked on their deployment capabilities over the years and now a thirty minute downtime is long. Now if CCP can just eliminate the daily downtime.

Anyway, I'm sure deploying a patch over 2, 3, or even 4 days does make things easier on the back end. But how about the player experience? Is it better to have everything dumped on our heads all at once, or spoon fed a little at a time over a few weeks? I'd hate it in FFXIV, but in EVE? I personally don't mind, except for when I need to cover the topic.