Hello dear and graceful GOG community.

I want to ask you what you "think" when you hear those words and what you "feel" are the differences between them? Are they the same thing? Same pool? Completely different things?

I am not looking for a description. I want to know what YOU think when you hear those words. The reason for this topic is not to find the exact truth or facts but to see how we feel about them. So I ask you to write about your feelings without doing any research.

Added an other question.

Third wave of question is here.

For me, the term Expansion Pack feel like the old-school expansions of old. New cd/dvd that installed either a new playable campaign/missions and/or upgraded things in the original. Big upgrades to the game.

DLCs feel obviously the newer style of expansions, and to me feels like smaller addons (hello Horse Armor), rather than bigger amounts of content.

Yes, I'm aware that DLCs can be much bigger and on a par these days with the Expansions of old, but that's just the first impression I get.

My feeling:
1. Expansion Pack are larger
2. Expansion Pack is finished final version, not beta or early access garbage
3. Expansion Pack extends the base game in a good way

4. DLC are little files or unimportant bonus contents
5. DLC are expensive
6. DLC usually are useless
7. DLC often break the base game

99% of the time:

Expansion pack: Large, substantial, and well-made extension of the main game, and almost a new game unto itself (note: these are almost never made any more and are functionally extinct).

DLC: quick & lazy cash-grab scam, consisting of content that was deliberately cut out of the main game so that it could instead be re-sold to people who've already bought the game, at extortionary prices.

Terminologically, they're the same, it's just that the language changed. Just like Windows programs have became "apps" in recent years. Coincidentally, that came along with shady market practices of releasing day 1 DLCs that were deliberately cut from the release version. Nowadays, the closest to the expansion packs of old would be the two major DLCs for The Witcher 3.

There are still some true expansion packs, but are getting harder and harder to find. Civilization still has a couple of big expansions, and the next Crusader Kings II DLC has been in the work for over a year and is basically a whole new game. Both games still have cashgrabs DLC though.

It's shocking how gamers nowadays are willing to pay for supersmall DLCs that clearly should have been part of the base game.

If we only consider the proper terms, an expansion pack adds new content, changes gameplay or, as the name itself implies, expands a base product. DLC, or downloadable content, are things that can be downloaded. They could add minor things or completely change the base product, so for example an expansion pack can be a DLC.

But if you forget proper definitions, people will tell you "expansions are good" and "DLCs are bad", and won't accept the idea that good expansions are also DLC since at least 10 years or so.

And for me, I don't care. They are all DLCs that I have to check if they are important or not for the game in cuestion and in the end I will buy them when they are super cheap or come with other important DLCs.

Expansion packs were I think an invention started with Wing Commander (or maybe MS Flightsimulator 3).
They wanted to call it DLC but Al Gore hadn't invented the internet yet so it became expansion packs and they came on floppies.

I rarely buy expansion pack or DLC individually, simply because I find excluding these additions diluting the experience of the base game and usually wait for a complete edition like the recently released Redout here on gog with all DLC's included.

Sometimes yes, but then I never recall seeing e.g. a mere mp3 soundtrack being called an expansion pack.

So to me the main difference is that with an expansion pack you can expect it to mean extra gaming content (be it a whole new campaign, new levels/missions, new characters to play etc.), while DLC can mean basically anything, from some electronic cartoon/making-of video/mp3 soundtrack, to a whole new campaign to the game.

Then again, I don't think anyone uses the term "expansion pack" anymore, so it is all "DLCs" nowadays. The difference I said may have come simply from the fact that "expansion pack"-term was mainly used in the time when people bought games from retail stores and wouldn't normally buy an extra "expansion pack" it if was merely some soundtrack CD, but on the other hand the term itself, "expansion pack", kinda implies it expands the actual gaming content, and is not just some additional fluff.

Expansion packs appeared since early 1980s.
For example, Dunjonquest: Upper Reaches of Apshai (1981) is the expansion pack of Dunjonquest: Temple of Apshai (1979).

Wizardry II (1982) was sold as a sequel to Wizardry I (1981), but II is basically an expansion pack of I.

Expansion Pack - Substantial additional content that feels like it was made after the main game rather than at the same time (eg, Doom 2's Final Doom, Neverwinter Night's Hordes of the Underdark, Dragon Age Origin's Awakening, Oblivion's Shivering Isles, etc)

DLC - Stuff that's a lot more trivial than an expansion pack or feels like it was intended to be part of the main game (and made at the same time) but was deliberately split off purely for the sake of "we must have DLC but don't want to put in much effort so let's split off a chapter of the main game and call that DLC". Eg, Oblivion's Horse Armor, Deus Ex Human Revolution's Missing Link, etc.

Funny... to me [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_64_accessories#Expansion_Pak_(NUS-007)]this[/url] is an expansion pack, or at least its still to this the day the first thing that comes to mind when I hear those words.

As for the difference; I would say, as others have, that an expansion pack is bigger but I do agree that it's solely down to the fact that when we called them expansion packs you bought them on discs and it wasn't worth it to companies to make a £2 cosmetic item and release it physically back then (I doubt you could recoup the cost of producing the CDs and packaging at those kind of prices) so they tended to be bigger.
When downloading (and DLC) became a thing it allowed companies to release smaller stuff at lower prices so that's what we associated the term with, even though there are loads of DLC that are just as big or as good as old style expansion packs.

Take Tales of Maj'Eyal, it has three DLCs, one is what I would call an 'expansion pack' in that it adds a whole new campaign and world, not quite but almost comparable to the original main game, the other two add a bunch of classes and races, areas and extra content. They're too lightweight to be an 'expansion' but add a lot of extra stuff to the game and are definitely not pointless cosmetic stuff.

Or another Roguelike; Sword of the Stars: The Pit. It's DLC cost £1.59 and each adds a new playable character plus some other new stuff like items or monsters. They fall between a pointless cosmetic item and an expansion, sure they could have released all the DLC as one big pack (which if you include the first two bits that got bundled together into the current Osmium Edition would add 9 new characters, three times what was in the original game) and charged £15 - £20 for it, but this way people can pick and choose which characters they might actually want to play instead of being forced to pay that when you only want one.

I'm not keen on the modern Civilisation games offering single countries as DLC, to me that doesn't seem value for money particularly when the base game of Civ 6 has about a quarter of the countries and rulers that Civ 4 had.

But the DLC that Paradox offers for Crusader Kings 2 and Stellaris I have no major issue with. Sure, Crusader Kings 2 has tons of cosmetic stuff but it's all purely cosmetic so you can ignore it completely, and the proper expansions are meaty and add interesting new mechanics, same with Stellaris.

Frankly I think the issue with DLC is just that everyone wants to see it as black and white, good or bad. The truth is there is some great DLC, great value and worth buying, and some shit stuff. Just like there is in anything.
The idea isn't inherently bad or wrong and I think if you'd offered me the option to keep buying new civilisations for Age of Empires 2 to prolong the lifespan of the game back when it came out I probably would have.

When I hear "expansion pack" I'm expecting a good deal of new content, new levels / areas / stories / characters etc. It sounds like something you would want if you like the base game.

When I hear "DLC" I'm more cautious because it could be all kinds of things. So my first instinct is to find out what kind of DLC it is - is it like an "expansion pack", something that adds quite a few more, maybe even essential content, ideally with new stories, or is it just cosmetic stuff, cheats, irrelevant content (like horse armor, a fancy extra sword etc.) that I wouldn't want to pay extra money for.

Beside that, "expansion pack" sounds a little more like something that was worked on after the release to extend the life of the game, while "DLC" is also associated with stuff that is split from the game right from the start to introduce different price models (base game, base game plus, base game with everything).

When i think of expansion pack i think of Half-Life. For me this game was the king of expansion packs. Opposing Force was almost as massive as the main game and even the very short Blue-Shift was at least interesting and fun. I love these games. Expansion Pack had a meaning back than. Today "DLC" can mean a thousand things. Sometimes they just cut content from the main game and call it DLC.

Thank you everyone for taking your time to contribute in detail. Your vision was most helpful. I am just typing this so that I know I have read so far. :)