The second WoW expansion is coming soon, but for the worst WoW fanatics the obvious thing is to already look forward - "what next?". World of Warcraft Lead Designers Jeffrey Kaplan and Tom Chilton lifted the veil over some future plans at the pre-BlizzCon Blizzard Community Summit in Anaheim on Thursday. World of Raids has the all the details, but the most important bit was the confirmation that Wrath of the Lich King will have three additional major raid instances to be introduced in content patches.
3.1 -- the first major content patch of the expansion, which is already done according to Kaplan -- will release the Ulduar 10 and 25-person raid instances, with 3.2 containing that secret surprise raid 205d instance, and 3.3 likely being the patch that introduces Icecrown Citadel.
For those who haven't been keeping count, that's three additional 10- and 25-man raids in addition to the existing set of three 10- and 25-man raids lined up for the expansion launch - re-tuned Naxxramas, Chamber of Aspects and The Eye of Eternity.
No timetable yet for the patches, but you could look at the Blizzard's past patch cycles for hints. Patch 2.1.0 (Black Temple) arrived four months after The Burning Crusade, 2.2.0 (Voice Chat) five months later - after some technical issues that kept the patch on PTR for a long time, 2.3.0 (Zul'Aman) two months later and finally 2.4.0 (Sunwell) four months after Zul'Aman. Based on that, I'd expect these three raid instances and the related content additions to arrive, evenly spaced, over then next 9-12 months after Wrath of the Lich King goes live. That leaves plenty of room for a content patch or two before it's again time to ponder about an expansion.
The fact that Icecrown Citadel, the de-facto "final battle" of the expansion is scheduled only for the third patch after expansion is somewhat surprising - many expected it to arrive sooner. On the other hand, it is a response to those who complained after they killed Illidan, the "big boss" of The Burning Crusade (introduced in 2.1.0, the first content patch of the first expansion) over an year before the next expansion. This time the story is more stretched out, which is a good thing in my books.
