Something I love about this time of year is all the great game sales help me justify buying expansions that I just could not bring myself to pay full price for. So I was wondering what are some great expansions out there that either breathe new life into a fun but aging game or that work as a megapatch to turn an old flop into a great new game?

The DLC for Fallout: New Vegas really flesh out the whole experience.

Diablo: Hellfire
Diablo 2: Lord of Destruction
Titan Quest: (whatever it was called)
Warhammer 40K Dawn of War: Dark Crusade

Oblivion - Shivering Isles
Fallout 3 - Point Lookout
Borderlands - all except Mad Moxxi

Paradox in general normally has good expansions for the games that they publish. Also note that most of the expansions also come with fixes for the core game as well and thus often make for a very worth while investment. Bleh i have issues with calling a Stand Alone release (eg Dark Crusade) as an expansion ;)

Also you totally left Starcraft 2 Brood Wars off the list ;)




As for other expansions that really added to the core game:
Baldur's Gate 2 The Throne of Baal
Total Anihillation had two great expansions which added some new campaigns and some big new toys (buzzsaw super gun!)
Neverwinter Nights has had 3 really powerful expansions - although I would note that with their addition the skills list became somewhat overloaded with options.
Warcraft 3 The Frozen Throne - new units, new maps and a great expansion of the core games campaign!


(and if we count stand alone releases then Homeworld Cataclysm deserves to be on the list ;))

Crusader Kings 2 is an exception here.
All patches are included even if you don't buy expansions. For example, all muslim mechanics are added to the game, even if you don't buy expansion. But if you want to play as a muslim, you have to buy DLC.

All fixes are implemented to game as well, even if you don't have any expansions bought.

All other games are similar to what you described - if you want major gameplay changes, crucial fixes, etc. it's better to buy expansions.

Dawn of War 2: Chaos Rising should definitely be on the list, it's great.
And Half-Life: Opposing Force. It takes the original game and expands upon it, what is it if not an expansion, a steam propelled locomotive? I mean it's clearly not a next iteration.

Brood War (for Starcraft) kicks ass, sideways.

Not exactly. You can choose only races introduced in this expansion in multiplayer. Unless you provide a key for previous games.

Well it still takes the original games and expand upon them. And no, you don't take the keys from the originals, it's much more stupid and contrived than that - you can just do a registry edit of course, but that's an unofficial way. The official way is actually having DoW and Winter Assault (oh right, another expansion worth mentioning. The campaign was great.) installed, even tho Dark Crusade runs independently of them. That's about 7 gigs of space on harddrive needlessly taken up.

Eh my view is that an Expansion Expands the original game itself. Dark Crusade isn't an expansion because it does not require the base game to be used. It is a stand alone release rather than an expansion (although the point about the MP race selection is something I had forgotten).


In my mind a proper Expansion pack is generally:

1) Requires the base game to be used and works as an extension/enhancement of the base game itself.

2) Generally adds a decent amount of content to the base game. This is where an expansion differs to DLC since DLC can be anything, but is often smaller content updates (eg for an RTS game it might be just new maps - whilst for a FPS it might just be few new guns).


Stand Alone releases don't require the base game to function and indeed often operate as their own individual entity in the game market. Whilst the concept is similar in that they expand upon the base content of the original title, they are a different kind of product because they do not require the base game to operate.

Borderlands 1 and 2 seem to give great bang per buck regarding DLC.

Really? I remember Dark Crusade promptinng me for DoW and Winter assault CD keys to unlock all races in multiplayer.

Well maybe it's just the steam version then, now that I think about it I've never installed retail.
You know you're just adding more mess to the already messy SLC vs expansion pack affair ?-P If devs call it an expansion, then it most probably is just that. They know better than you what changes and what additions are there when compared to the original. We don't need to think of even more words just because they decide to give us the convenience of not having to install the original.